


To Be Mundane

by endtable_fororphans



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dragons, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Suicidal Thoughts, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endtable_fororphans/pseuds/endtable_fororphans
Summary: “Do you even know what I was doing tonight?” Roslin asked softly, carefully, in an attempt to start this complete disaster of a conversation over.Confusion struck Vilkas’ brow. “What does it matter? I don’t—”“I found the Glenmoril coven.”[A canon-adjacent retelling of the final two Companions quests, featuring my Dovahkiin OC]
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn & Vilkas, Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Vilkas
Comments: 41
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

Kodlak Whitemane, Harbinger of the Companions of Whiterun, lay dead at her feet.

How had this  _ happened? _

She knew the facts—that the Silver Hand had quietly infiltrated Jorrvaskr at dusk, some posing as servants and others as mere shadows until Kodlak sat at the table and lifted his goblet for a toast to his comrades. 

She knew that the greatest and most respected warrior she’d ever personally met had died to a knife in the back, sitting at his dinner table. 

None of the facts answered her question because hers was of a more cosmic nature. 

Why  _ now?  _ Kyne, Akatosh… Ysmir, whoever it was that wrote this day… How could they have done this  _ now? _ Roslin never considered herself the most devout of her kinsmen, certainly never claimed to know the will of a god, but she never thought them to be capable of such cruel irony.

She began to see the appeal of following Hircine to the Hunting Grounds—even as prey, she’d be granted a fighting chance. 

The thought sliced deeply—it might be a welcome fate for Aela, who stood over Kodlak’s body compulsively thumbing her nocked arrow, eyes fierce and lips pulled tight, but their Harbinger deserved an afterlife of feasting and revelry. He’d done enough running and fighting. He deserved rest. 

He shouldn’t be denied Sovngarde because Roslin rode into Whiterun slightly later than intended. There must still be a way. 

A pained gasp cut through the silence as she discovered that Ria’s compulsive need to care for others apparently had its limits. The girl finally stopped offering food or water or comfort and knelt beside Farkas, quiet sobs wracking her chest. 

_ Wait.  _

Roslin began looking around the hall—Njada stood over Ria and Farkas before the fire, looking uncharacteristically shaken. Torvar was sitting in a chair just inside the doors, staring into nothing with blood flecking his face from the battle and half a dozen ale bottles around his feet. (Roslin was pleased to see that he was currently holding a waterskin.) Athis sat in the shadows, running his finest dagger across a whetstone over and over, red eyes glimmering dangerously. 

Roslin ran her eyes over everyone again just as methodically—no, she hadn’t missed him. Vilkas simply wasn’t here. 

She whispered his name as a question to Aela, who jerked her head towards the living quarter's stairs. Roslin nodded in response before leaving, stepping carefully around the fallen and grieving.

She paused at the top step, wondering what she would find below. Vilkas was prickly and terse on the best of days, and today was anything but. 

It added another layer of nerves on top of the mass that festered and roiled whenever she was forced to talk to him, but this was important. Of the surviving members of the Circle, he was probably the most willing and capable to help Kodlak rest the way he deserved. 

Even if he was probably the most stubborn person she’d ever met. Even if he sometimes looked at her like she was something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of his boot. Even if looking in his eyes sometimes made her feel like she was being turned inside-out. 

She steeled herself as she stepped down—she could handle Vilkas. For Kodlak, she’d apparently do just about anything. 

The living quarters felt uncomfortably tomb-like, with its low, arched ceiling and singular hallway that always carried sound with disturbing efficiency. She followed the faint noises, footsteps and shuffling, towards the Circle’s rooms, trying and failing to ignore the open, welcoming door to Kodlak’s study.

She shook her head—she could only hope to be granted a final look at his varied treasures and possessions—hallmarks of a life well-lived—before they were lost to the fire. She had to force herself to turn, to walk each step down the short hallway to the twins’ quarters. 

The line of Vilkas’ shoulders was pulled even tighter than usual as he shoved provisions into his pack—a few strips of jerky, a ragged bedroll, a whetstone. 

Did he mean to  _ travel _ at a time like this?

She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. Her armor clinked lightly, unmistakable in the silence of the basement, but he was so focused, he didn’t turn.

“You going somewhere?” 

He froze in an instant at her question, purposefully phrased as an accusation. His head snapped to the side, an ear over a pauldron, body coiled like a spring. 

His silver eyes searched the air for a moment before his hands resumed their task, and when he answered, his voice was cold. 

“Driftshade Refuge.”

It was a simple response, radiating certainty, but she heard his lying pulse climb despite his calm veneer. Concealing emotion was useless among Circle members—blood always made its intentions known, be it anger, lust, or fear.

And Vilkas was  _ enraged. _

“What’s at Driftshade Refuge?” Roslin kept her tone even; his imminent departure couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, and the implication of it all sat like a weight in her gut.

“The Silver Hand’s last holdouts,” he answered bitterly as if the answer was obvious. “You and Aela have done well at provoking them. They were so desperate to strike back, so purposeful, they all but dropped their blades as soon as the old man fell. Such a waste of life.”

Her mouth went dry as tinder. “You blame  _ us _ for this?”

“I do.” His response was immediate, stoic, and laced with conviction. His movements became more violent as his voice began to fray. “The only reason they infiltrated Jorrvaskr was in retaliation for the dozens of camps  _ you _ scattered.”

A scowl of her own carved down her features. Her guilt weighed enough on its own—he didn’t need to add to it. 

“Hey, the  _ Silver Hand _ is responsible for what happened tonight,” she asserted, taking a step forward for good measure. “An attack was inevitable; if we hadn’t taken the fight to them, thinned their numbers out, we all could be dead now.”

"But not you," he growled, thrusting his dagger into its scabbard with a  _ snap. _ "You weren't here."

Indignance flared, bright and angry. It was the same tired argument thrust before her again—that she wasn’t a true Companion worthy of their trust and respect because she didn’t perpetually hang around Jorrvaskr when there was an entire damn  _ world _ outside Whiterun Hold. 

As noble as the Companions were, as honorable their intentions, they struggled to see the big picture—that her world, the  _ real _ world, was larger than their lycanthropic curse and resulting blood feud with the Silver Hand. 

Her world had dragons. It had actual Daedric Princes causing a ruckus, not to mention the impending Armageddon that was her  _ divine right, apparently _ to subvert.

And Vilkas wanted her to set that aside to spar and brood and  _ “maintain a presence” _ with the rest of them until Alduin swallowed the world.

Somewhere between Kynesgrove and Riverwood, Delphine probably just contracted a rage-induced migraine and she doesn’t know why.

But whether his narrow-mindedness was placed by the curse or was just something he was simply born with, she’d at least hoped Vilkas would have thought better of her than to assume that she wouldn’t—or  _ didn’t  _ care. 

“They’ve always been our enemies,” he continued, heedless of her internal ranting, yanking at the drawstring like it was a garrote, “but you two started a  _ war. _ Now I have to end it before more of our people die.”

Before she could fully process his meaning, he swiftly shouldered the pack, grabbed his greatsword, and stalked towards the door. It was on pure instinct alone that her hand shot out to catch his elbow, but his battle-honed reflexes were terrifying, and no sooner had she made contact then she was slammed against the doorframe, pinned by a steel gauntlet across her collarbones and a claw at her elbow. The metal bit into her skin hard enough to pinch, but it was his raw, inescapable glare that pinned her in place with the strength of a dozen hands.

Bare of his war paint, his pale eyes carried an unprecedented depth of pain, honed into a weapon to drive away any offerings of compassion. She’d come face-to-face with  _ dragons _ less daunting. 

She hated it. Hated how he could nearly stop her heart with a single look. Hated how his eyes burned straight through her skin like they really were made of silver.

Hated how  _ alive _ she felt in this moment.

“You can’t go alone,” she pressed, winded from his advance but determined to not let it show. “It’s suicide.”

His scowl faltered slightly, gaze dropping to his wrist, but he quickly screwed his courage to cover the weakness. 

“Then I’ll take them all with me,” he vowed under his breath, and her heart truly stopped—a full beat of silence under his wrist that brought his eyes back to hers to search accusingly.

She told herself that she’d have a similar reaction no matter who it had been, but it felt uncomfortably like a lie. She looked away as she pushed the thought out of her mind—it simply wasn’t the time. 

“If you die, the Companions would be that much weaker,” she argued, covering her panic with paper-thin reason. “We wouldn’t survive another attack.” 

“Ah, is it  _ we _ again?” His lips twisted sourly. 

She huffed in frustration as the bitterness finally boiled over. 

“I’m sorry, have I not given enough to belong here?” She pushed back against his arm, but he kept her pinned. “Did I not recover a piece of Wuuthrad? Rescue farmers from dungeons, beat up  _ shopkeepers _ on your order?” He growled at that—even he knew that some jobs were maybe beneath them. “Am I not just as  _ cursed _ as you are?”

He exhaled sharply, almost a growling as he looked away to the floor, just as cold and hostile as he’d been since she entered. There was only one thing she had left to get him to listen, to heed her—it was right there, resting on her tongue, almost begging to be spoken. True, Kodlak had asked her to keep it secret, but he was dead, and Roslin had wondered from the beginning why he hadn’t included Vilkas in the plans.

She forced a breath, willing her blood to cease boiling.

“Do you know what I was doing tonight?” She asked softly, carefully, in an attempt to start this complete disaster of a conversation over.

Confusion struck Vilkas’ brow. “What does it  _ matter?  _ I don’t—” 

“I found the Glenmoril coven.” 

His eyes snapped to hers, wide with both surprise and recognition. She was gratified that his constant insistence that he was the most well-read Companion aside from the Harbinger and the Grey-Mane patriarch seemed to be truthful—she didn’t feel like recounting a centuries-old legend while pinned to a wall.

“They’re all dead,” she declared, speaking each word clearly enough so he could hear the honesty in each pulse of her heart. “I brought one of their heads back with me—it’s in the saddlebag of Kodlak’s horse if you want proof.”

“A  _ head?”  _ He was taken aback, his grip weakening minutely as he puzzled through this information.

“It’s what he asked for,” she shrugged, “the first step in lifting the curse. He was my Harbinger, too, so I did it."

His expression became unreadable as his razor focus turned inward. She leaned forward, into the arm across her chest to meet his gaze with her own icy stare, gripping his attention tight and not giving an inch. 

“I slew a den full of hagravens and their pets because the old man  _ asked _ me to.”

His scowl lifted, his lips parted infinitesimally—as close to impressed as she’d ever seen him, though she couldn’t understand why—she’d taken down far larger prey just on her way there. 

He lifted his arm away from her chest, assessed her physical state as he stood upright again. “You are unharmed?” 

It was a question and a statement, and she couldn’t help but scoff a bit at his shock.  _ “Dragonborn, _ Vilkas,” she calmly reminded him, pointing to the Axe of Whiterun glimmering on her hip.

He grimaced slightly in recognition, but the scowl was again directed at himself and Roslin recognized the twin blades of regret and self-doubt carving through him. She’d beaten past his hostility successfully, but couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty at causing him more pain.

They passed a moment in silence. He still hadn’t let go of her arm but now seemed less tense, and hopefully less willing to throw himself at a tower filled with Silver Hand zealots.

“Look, I know I can’t stop you from going to Driftshade,” she relented gently, aware that whatever trust she'd just earned likely dangled by a thread. “Just… Just don’t be reckless. Come back in one piece so we can figure out if we can still cure him.”

“He’s  _ dead,” _ he argued tersely. “You can’t cure a corpse.”

“If his spirit is still around somehow, I think there could be a chance.” 

He gave her an incredulous look, and she lifted a corner of her mouth in response.

“What? I’m an optimist.”

The hard line of his shoulders softened after a moment as his grip on her arm changed—the tiniest movement to shift from restraint to almost a caress if she believed he was capable of being gentle. And she couldn’t help it—her heart swelled, felt full to bursting at the tiny gesture. Like a damned foolish girl—he was _grieving_ and this was _not the time._

Even so, she couldn’t deny that he now seemed to hold her in higher regard—if only to a small degree. She could see it in his posture, feel it in his pulse. He was looser, meeting her gaze like an equal instead of looking down his nose. It was nice, not having to wade through the mire of contempt and disdain he usually rolled out just for her.

“Is Revka still saddled?” He asked suddenly, breaking her out of her thoughts. He released her arm and turned away before she could respond, started rummaging through his trunk once more as his pulse  _ thrummed _ with purpose.

“Yeah, I…” she began slowly, observing his odd behavior so closely, her words became stilted. “I’d hoped he would have been ready to… to tell me the next step towards the cure— _ Vilkas,” _ she stressed, trying to get his attention through his frantic packing—she wasn’t sure he was even listening. “What are you  _ doing?” _

Her harried question slid right off him as he tossed the poultice pouch into the sack along with extras of everything he’d packed previously. “Did you leave her in the stables or at the gate?” he asked, cinching it closed carefully, with none of the violence he’d displayed earlier.

“The gate,” she replied, still bereft of understanding but enough tact to withhold the  _ ‘obviously _ ’ resting on her tongue.

“Good,” he nodded. He hefted his greatsword onto his back and wrapped the bag’s drawstring around his hand, still not meeting her confused stare. “We should move—with luck, she might be able to get us to Driftshade before dawn.”

She turned to gape at him as he brushed past her. “I’m sorry, ‘ _ we’?” _

“Yes,” he replied, turning to face her in the doorway. “Consider this your final test.” 

The idea that she was still  _ on trial  _ rankled, but she stood her ground, rocking back onto her heels and unwilling to move an inch until he explained himself, and thankfully, he noticed.

“An attack like this cannot go unanswered,” he began, shaking his head vehemently with steel in his tone. “The Silver Hand  _ will _ pay.”

She was in wholehearted agreement, but it wasn’t enough of an explanation, and they both knew it. She folded her arms impatiently.

“Bring me back alive,” he commanded, heedless of how she hated being ordered to do something that came second nature, “so perhaps  _ we _ may still cure Kodlak.”

A sound plan, but again, the facts of the situation didn’t matter to her. Of course, she would go, of course, she would make sure he lived—she’d do the same for any Companion.

She wanted to hear him admit that he needed help. That he needed help from  _ her.  _

Time might be of the essence, but damnit, she needed this. 

“You were so determined to go alone before,” she needled, shrugging her shoulders. “Why do you need me now?”

She could see it in his calculating stare, the way his lips twitched in thought—he knew precisely what she was doing, what she was after, and was going to make her work for it.

“My brother is… struggling,” he admitted, shifting the back in his grip as his steely determination loosened. “I can’t ask him to do this. And as the senior member of the Circle, Aela should remain here, to be the acting Harbinger before another can be chosen formally.”

Damn his stubborn pride. She knew he was going to be difficult, but she had no problems wringing it out of him. Word by word, if need be.

“Say it, then.”

His brow furrowed somehow deeper. “Say… what?” 

“Say you need my help,” she clarified, stepping towards him unflinchingly. “And mean it.”

The air between them thickened, sparking with a truly shocking amount of tension as he met her defiant glare in consideration, and Ysmir, she didn’t realize they were standing  _ this close—  _

“Roslin,” he began suddenly, and she had to suppress a shiver at the sound of her own name. “Will you help me?”

His delivery lacked expression—was a mere assembly of words—but she supposed that all she could hope for and resigned herself to slight disappointment as she looked down and reached for the pack in his hand.

Then he said the one word that turned the world on its head.

“Please.”

This time, it was difficult to meet his gaze for completely different reasons. It felt like the floor had just dropped out beneath her—just the combination of his eyes and rough voice was enough to send her blood rushing to all sorts of places, but there was an insistent edge to his tone. Like he was a single step away from begging.

And for just a moment, she saw him begging her in an altogether different context before praying to every god she could name that he somehow didn’t hear the way her pulse skipped and stuttered. 

Just how jilted was their relationship when he could so thoroughly fluster her simply by saying  _ please? _

And how unobservant was  _ she _ not to have noticed how insanely attractive this man was when he wasn’t being arrogant or harsh?

“And…” he continued without prompting, further distorting her world view, “in return, I suppose I could…” he paused, picking his words carefully as he cast his gaze around,  _ “attempt _ to not be so…” 

“Belligerent?” She offered, willing her tone and pulse to return to normal as she stepped forward to take the pack from his hand. She was rewarded with an eye-roll he tried to obscure by looking away.

“Don’t push it,” he reprimanded  as he stepped off into the hall.

She matched his stride, finding something like a rhythm that only slightly quelled the blood singing in her veins. “Sullen.”

An exasperated sigh. “Roslin—”

She narrowed her eyes accusingly as he opened the door to the stairs.  _ “Grumpy.” _

_ “Roslin,”  _ he growled as he gestured up the steps, and a gasp caught in her throat, a chill slithered down her spine before she could smother it. “Move.”

* * *

By the time they arrived upstairs, Kodlak’s body had been mercifully removed from the hall, taken to the Skyforge in preparation for his funeral. Although Vilkas had seemed intent on leaving as soon as possible, especially since their conversation in his room had lasted far longer than Roslin intended, he hesitated on the steps down to the cloud district, watching Athis and Njada haul firewood up to the cold forge with intense longing. She couldn’t help it—her heart broke a little for him. 

So she nudged his arm, nodding up to the curved falcon sheltering the new pyre, and he somehow understood her without her saying a word. He sprinted up the stairs to the forge to kneel beside Kodlak under the torchlight, sharing a private moment and parting words that she swore by the Nine she’d never ask him to repeat no matter how curious she became. 

He rose after a few moments, before quickly finding and exchanging words with Aela, who was supervising the construction of the pyre and still hadn’t un-nocked that arrow. 

Aela’s hawk-like gaze fell on her, and after a moment, gave a nod of understanding before nearly shoving Vilkas back down the steps with a regretful expression. Roslin knew Aela would probably have given two of her left fingers for the chance to enact justice on the Silver Hand, but she seemed to understand that, at least for now, her place was here, with the rest of the pack. 

Roslin swore to herself she’d somehow find a way to make it up to her. 

Footsteps sounded in front of her—Vilkas returned to her with a set jaw and grim purpose through his shoulders, and together, armed and armored to the teeth, they strode together silently through the Whiterun gate to where Revka waited patiently, the sack at her side seeming to drip black in the dark night. 

Vilkas took a cursory glance into the sack until he suddenly flipped it closed decisively like something had snapped at his hand, before mounting smoothly.

Without missing a beat, Roslin kicked one of his boots out of the stirrup on her side. 

“Look out,” she warned, swinging herself up gracefully and nearly sitting in his lap before he backed out of the saddle to sit behind her.

“What—! What are you doing?” He nearly shouted as she settled in.

She twisted around as far as she could to see him gaping incredulously. She had to suppress a laugh—she thought it would be obvious. 

“Do  _ you _ own a horse?” She asked. It was a legitimate question, as she truly didn’t know, and on the off chance that he did, they would take both.

“I was… saving for one,” he prevaricated, not meeting her amused expression as she scoffed.

“That’s a no, so get comfortable,” she replied, facing forward again and pulling up her fur-lined hood.

“We won’t make as good a time this way,” he argued tersely. 

She sighed heavily, really starting to get annoyed at this point, before twisting again. 

“Look, either we ride double, or one of us incurs a bounty for stealing a horse,” she challenged. “What’s it going to be? 

He narrowed his eyes at her knowingly—the last job he’d given her involved beating the daylights out of a horse thief from Rorikstead, who only became a horse thief when his home and stable had been burned down by bandits with his wife and a legitimately obtained horse still inside. She’d given the poor man a meal and the gentlest slap on the wrist Skyrim had ever seen before returning the bounty to Vilkas unfulfilled. 

That had not been an enjoyable conversation for either of them. He’d roared about  _ consequences  _ and she’d screamed right back about  _ basic decency  _ until even Heimskr stopped to listen. 

Thankfully, this argument didn’t have half the fire of that one and died out when neither of them felt like stoking it.

“I know the quickest route to Driftshade,” he protested weakly as he shifted a bit on Revka’s back. “At least let me be in front.”

“Oh, you want to be the little spoon?” she replied, cocking her head at him teasingly.

His pride took the hit, pulling the corners of his mouth into a frown before wordlessly nudging Revka’s flanks with his heels.

The old horse lurched into motion, nearly unbalancing Vilkas until he gripped Roslin’s belt in a crushing hold, sinking his gloved fingers into the space between the metal and hide links and her skin. She was pulled back and down slightly, but thankfully both of their dignities were spared the embarrassment of falling off a horse.

Although she did have to cover a truly awkward gasp with affected laughter as they lumbered off under the beautiful northern lights of Skyrim. 

They managed to pass a few hours in silence, and Roslin tried and failed to not feel obnoxiously smug that he didn’t attempt to direct their route from behind the saddle.

She also chose to ignore the fact that he hadn’t moved his hand from her hip, chalking it up to the fact that Revka clearly favored one of her front hooves and couldn’t turn left very smoothly, the poor thing. Roslin mentally promised her to have the ferrier take a look when they returned, hopefully before the next sunset.

The Whiterun-bred mare might be old, but she was still a warhorse used to bearing a large, fully-armored man as well as heavy steel barding—with her lighter saddle, their combined weight seemed to bother her little. By her strength and endurance, they made good time, and Roslin believed Vilkas’ estimation would prove accurate—they should arrive at Driftshade Refuge just before dawn, barring any thieves, sabrecats, or rogue dragons. 

But there was only so much silence Roslin could take, and as dawn stretched its pale fingers into the clear sky before them, she formulated a question. 

“So,” she began as Revka jolted around another turn, “hagravens?”

“Hm?” He sounded almost disoriented like she’d just roused him from meditation, and she imagined she probably did. She couldn’t feel more than a tad guilty—she was very bored, and attempting to wait patiently for a bloodbath was making her all kinds of jittery.

“Killing dragons didn’t impress you, but a few  _ hagravens _ do?” 

He grunted in disgust, and she smiled at the realization that she could practically  _ hear _ him scowling.

“They are the vilest creatures I’ve ever encountered,” he responded. “And it was my understanding that being Dragonborn meant you were somehow built to slay them.” 

“That doesn’t make it  _ easy,”  _ she scoffed. “I could still get bitten in half or incinerated as easily as you. It may be my destiny, but…” she shook her head, “it seems all the dragon blood has given me is the appetite of a much larger man and the balls of a far more foolish one.” 

He chuckled, a new and deeply pleasant rumble against her back that made her forget the cold.  _ Not the time.  _

“As well as… you know,” she continued in a rush to obscure a shiver, “the obligation to slay every dragon I see and eat their soul so I can insult them in their own language.”

He gave a single huff of amusement. “Mm. I admit I have questions... if that’s alright.” 

Ysmir, what was happening to the world? First, he says _ please, _ and now he begs permission? These were truly the end times.

“Uhm,” she blurted dumbly in surprise before remembering herself. “Yeah, sure.”

“Is the dragon blood anything like the wolf’s?” He asked earnestly. “Is there a call to hunt? Does it hound your sleep like—” 

“One at a time, please,” she cut in under an amused smile—she hadn’t expected him to be so enthusiastic about this. 

“The call, then,” he clarified. “Is there one for dragons as there is for wolves?”

She considered that for a while. It was odd, the feeling that the information was there in her head, but required deciphering. 

“I don’t feel a  _ call,  _ exactly,” she began at length, bumbling as she attempted to put pure gut instinct into sensible words. It was more difficult than she’d anticipated, and despite their unspoken truce, her own pride was still pressuring her to not sound like an idiot in front of Vilkas. 

“It’s more like a distant kind of kinship,” she continued, doubting more and more that she was going to make any sense at all. “Sometimes they’ll try to talk while we fight, and—” She gave a breath of laughter, “—while they’re  _ usually _ assholes, some of them seem to… I don’t know, grudgingly accept that we have a few things in common.” 

“I was unaware that dragons were prone to fits of rage when someone else eats the last sweetroll,” he remarked, and she felt her eyes go wide. 

She fought the urge to turn around to look at the man behind her because she was no longer sure it was Vilkas, who wouldn’t know a joke if it bit him on the ass. 

But she couldn’t just let that dig at her sweet tooth stand—she’d grown up with six siblings and was no stranger to banter. 

“And I was unaware that wolves had any sense of humor to speak of," she smirked over her shoulder.

He was silent then, and she wondered if she'd somehow misread the situation or bruised his pride before he spoke after a few thoughtful moments.

"Do you ever wish to be rid of it?" He asked softly, his low voice tickling at her ear. "To be… mundane again?"

The question gave her pause, an intellectual equivalent of whiplash. She had to admit she hadn't considered it—of somehow returning to normalcy after being saddled with  _ destiny  _ and  _ duty  _ and the fate of the entire bloody world. She felt more than heard the answer in her gut, but this time, it was shockingly easy to put it into words.

"Yeah,” she replied and felt that flood of certainty once more. “Yeah, I do." 

* * *

The morning dawned bleak and cold over Driftshade Refuge—a crumbling pile of stones that could hardly be called a building let alone a refuge, but was as heavily manned and defended as a citadel. Frozen dew hung from sharpened stakes as thick as her arm thrust into the frozen earth, and they could smell the sweat of the Silver Hand zealots inside. Along with the charred, rotting remains of dozens of wolves hastily burned.

The paranoid bastards must be on constant alert for an attack, expecting to see a frothing pack of weres tearing up the hillside at any given moment.

They weren’t expecting stealth tactics at dawn. And they certainly weren’t expecting Vilkas. 

In her brief time as a member of the circle, it was impossible not to notice the differences in how the other members behaved as wolves. Skjor had been lawless, full of anger, and undiscriminating. Roslin had learned quickly to stay out of his way or lose a hand. Aela moved gracefully both as woman and beast but was so driven to find the biggest prize, to hunt the largest prey, that she often left other allies behind and surrounded by lesser foes. Farkas was slower than the others, but without a doubt the strongest and biggest—he could hold a choke point for hours so long as he managed to devour a heart or two.

She wished she could have seen Kodlak shift before his passing. It would have been a sight to behold.

But aside from Kodlak, Vilkas was the only other circle member she'd never seen as a wolf. And she’d been a lesser person for it.

They'd approached the refuge from the east, using the glare of the sunrise on snow to blind the defenders to their advance. There was limited cover, but she managed to line up a few shots from behind a rocky outcropping and felled a couple of zealots before alerting everyone.

"Focus on the archers and stay behind me," He growled as he stepped out of cover and into the path of a charging group of zealots—a massive brute with a battle axe backed up by two swordsmen.

Her heart stopped dead—he wouldn’t try to take all of them on his own, could he? He'd promised she could help, and she promised that she wouldn't let him die—they hadn’t shaken on it or anything, but they had a  _ deal.  _

He must have heard her panic—despite the zealots approaching, he turned towards her and gave a reassuring nod, though the sentiment didn’t quite take because, in the next instant, he slipped the belt holding his greatsword off his shoulder, and threw the sheathed blade into the snow at his side. 

Her eyes flew back and forth in her head between tracking movement on the battlements and watching Vilkas sink into a predatory posture, his hands splayed into claws, reflecting the rising sun off his gauntlets and hunched shoulders. 

She held her breath, and over the whistling wind and the zealots’ pounding footsteps, she heard him speak.

"By Ysmir… let this be the last time."

To any human, it was hardly a whisper, barely discernible, but her heightened, frayed senses caught it as easily as kindling would a spark, lighting her up with concern and fear. 

A roar rent the air, and Vilkas dropped down to all fours, his silhouette rippling and waving in front of her, black smoke obscuring him.

The zealots halted their charge, even the ones on the battlements relaxed their bows to stare as the black form expanded—a massive, furred ridge rose over the smoke, a tail whipped out, and before the fog had dissipated completely, a pair of eyes shone white as the twin moons at midnight.

He braced a massive paw backward and leaped, and her previous notions of time didn’t seem to apply anymore.

Vilkas sprang forward faster than her eyes could follow, covering several feet in an instant, and spilled the blood of all three zealots in as many seconds.

She gaped at the display until arrows began pelting the snow around him, and he was off again, advancing on the refuge itself.

The archers had all but forgotten her, instead tracking the wolf crossing the rest of the distance to the walls in graceful, loping strides—lean and sleek and black as ebony, cutting through the snow like a knife. 

She picked off another bowman as Vilkas stood his ground in the crumbling archway of the wall, taking up nearly the entire space and carving through warrior after warrior who attempted to enter his reach.

There were too many bowmen out of her range, likely lining up shots on him as she stood targetless. She relaxed her grip, assessing the area. The outcropping she’d been standing behind led into a strand of trees that had been left to grow far too close to the refuge—she darted into the trees, gripping her arrow in her bow hand and shimmying up the thickest one nearest the walls as fast as she could, grateful again for her slight frame as she leapt off a branch and rolled onto the stone rampart.

Roslin shouldered her bow, stowed the arrow, and drew her axes, hefting the weight of steel in both hands. Though they lacked the familiar balance of the lumber axe she'd swung since she was strong enough to lift it, the fluidity with which these cut through the air made them gracefully brutal in combat, combining the speed of a sword with the weight of a mace. With one in each hand, she felt practically unstoppable. 

Another roar echoed through what was once a proper bailey—Vilkas was taking too much fire from the remaining archers. As her father would say when he woke her before the sun in the frigid Dawnstar mornings, it was  _ time to work. _

The length of the rampart before her was peppered with bowman in varying degrees of terror at the sound of the carnage Vilkas was wreaking below, but as she pulled back her fur-lined hood, Roslin only saw a forest of trees that needed felling before she’d be allowed a single dipper from the bucket of ice water slowly melting in the heat from the iron forge.

Dawnstar may have been a mining town, but it was her father’s mill that kept them alive, and there were never enough hired hands to feed both mines—not even Nords wanted to chop wood from sunup to sundown only a few hundred feet from a frozen sea. 

Roslin and her siblings had grown up in and around the ice—had been skipping across the small glaciers that floated near the shore since they could run. Nearly immune to the cold, they were all the labor her father had, most days. 

She heard the  _ fwip, fwip  _ of arrows being loosed, and suddenly it was like being back home, playing at the shore after lunch. 

She ducked and wove her way delicately over the uneven, half-frozen stones, her steps even and sure, arrows missing her by inches until she was within range of the first target. 

Her heart clenched as his face became near enough to decipher. The boy before her was a Breton and hardly old enough for a beard, and—by the way he quickly nocked another arrow despite her quicker advance—apparently so taken with these zealots, he was willing to die for them.

A waste of life, indeed.

She saw the terrified whites of his eyes as he fired his final shot that rained splinters when it broke on the flat of her left axe. Her right swung up, destroying his bow, and then down mightily, cleaving through the mere scraps of hide comprising his armor and sinking deep into the point where his neck met his shoulder.

She felt the blade hit his spine, suffering the sick jolt that shot up her arm, but she had neither the time nor inclination for a passing blessing or apology for killing him. Nowadays, the only time guilt pressed its heavy hand on her conscience was only when the blood of Skyrim ran down her axes. That knowledge pained her deeply. It made her feel more like the monster she was supposed to be, being a werewolf and Dragonborn both. 

She had no personal quarrel with elves outside the Thalmor and therefore felt simply a passing regret when she was forced to kill them, but it was hard to feel any sort of remorse for the damned Imperials that felt compelled to attack her simply because she wore an amulet of Talos and offered thanks at his shrines. They had no respect for Skyrim's people or Her history, so she would feel nothing when their blood fed Her soil.

If that made her half a zealot herself, so be it. She was nothing if not a daughter of Skyrim.

She’d nearly cleared the ramparts—backed the final bowman into a ruined tower with no way out unless they suddenly sprouted wings—when a thundering crash from below reached her ears. Vilkas must have broken down the door and was advancing without her. 

Her focus wavered for only a split second, but it was a split-second too long. In the instant her gaze flickered down to the bailey, the Bosmer she’d been engaging made his move, thrusting a palm-sized knife under her left ribs.

It hardly felt like a scratch with her blood running so high, but when she finally killed the elf—a sharp crack of her elbow followed by a wicked slash of an axe across his face—she felt the warmth of blood seeping down her side and a burning sensation that in her experience, usually accompanied poison.

_ How wonderful.  _

She hung her left ax at her side before pressing her hand over the wound, hissing breathlessly as she scrabbled down a place on the rampart where the wall had partially collapsed, tripping and hobbling down to the ground. 

A terrible noise echoed out of the entrance to the ruin—a stream of shouts and screams punctuated by roars and wet, slashing sounds. It grew louder as she stepped inside, leaning on the tilting walls for support as the pain grew deeper. 

Her skin crawled as she followed the noise in search of Vilkas—blood was everywhere, and only grew thicker the further she went. Streams of it flowed on the floor, splatters decorated the walls, and there was not a single body that was left intact. She saw arms and legs that had been torn off, torsos ripped open with ribs exposed to the air, faces so eviscerated, she couldn’t tell if they had once been male or female, man or mer. 

As violent as her life now was, as much as she enjoyed a well-fought battle, the sheer carnage surrounding her on all sides was somehow nearly more than she could stomach. For the first time since Helgen, it was finally getting to her.

Her previous experience with Skjor, Aela, or Farkas couldn’t hold a candle to this. They’d each had their own faults, but they’d never displayed this level of brutality. Mara forgive her, but her will to find Vilkas wavered in the face of it all. 

But she made a promise, and the depth of her stubborn streak was surpassed only by his own, so she kept following the sound of death, leading her further into the ruins. 

Her wound slowed her considerably, poison sinking deeper with every step, and after a time, she realized the noise had stopped altogether, forcing her to follow the trail of blood and viscera she’d been trying not to look at, until she reached a large room with a tall ceiling. Stairs to her right led to an upper floor, under which was a darkened tunnel leading to what looked like a bedroom. 

The entire refuge had fallen utterly silent, and it pressed in on all sides, weighing heavier than the lack of sound had any right to be—though perhaps it was simply the poison dragging her down. She felt it everywhere inside of her now, stretching slick tendrils around every muscle in her body until sleep was nearly all she could think about, singing sweetly as her mother.

She staggered forward, nearly falling to her knees as the toe of one of her boots tripped over a slab of meat that was once someone’s torso. Her breath rasped in the quiet as she caught herself against the stone stairway, but over the clatter of her armor, she heard it—a single, pained whine from above. 

She spurred herself to action, putting away the Axe of Whiterun and leaning heavily on the rail as she climbed the stairs one at a time, her feet so heavy, she was reduced to crawling as she reached the top. 

If she hadn’t already been on all fours, the sight before here would have brought her to her knees.

Vilkas, still a wolf, was hunched over on the floor, facing away from the stairs, covered in blood and surrounded by fragments of dead Silver Hand, his ridged back rising and falling without any sense of rhythm. His breath wheezed slightly as it left him, and as she pulled herself closer with her right arm, she saw three arrows sunk into his side and a dagger buried deeply into his flank. 

All silver—more than enough to stop him from shifting back until she could get all of it out of his skin. 

She grunted in pain as she crawled closer, and her heart leapt into her throat in panic as his ears twisted towards her. 

He raised his glistening head to peer at her over a massive shoulder for a moment before laying back down. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her or if he was simply accepting death by her hand, whether she was friend or foe.

“Vilkas,” she rasped hollowly—Ysmir, how did just  _ talking _ get so hard? “Vilkas, I’m here.” 

He didn’t respond, kept wheezing and whining plaintively as she slowly inched closer, black water threatening to fill her vision. 

Finally, she was in arm’s reach and managed to pull herself into a sitting position near his wounds. 

She lifted the hand from her side experimentally and gasped in pain as the dried blood pulled at the open wound. She immediately felt dizzier, less connected to reality—she couldn’t be bleeding out, could she? That elf’s dagger had been so _ small…  _

Vilkas whined again, and before the black could rise any further, she pressed her bloody left hand into his equally bloody side and gripped one of the arrows in her right, steeling her shaking nerves with every ounce of will she had left. 

“Whatever you do,” she pleaded desperately, screwing her eyes shut in anticipation,  _ “please _ don’t kill me.”

They weren’t even friends, but somehow she knew he’d never forgive himself if he did. 

The groan he made as she tore the arrow from his hide echoed dully in the chamber and tugged painfully at her insides, but he made no move to attack, and as she watched his flesh knit together under the matted fur, she felt the tiniest bit stronger—maybe she could keep this promise, fulfill this job after all. Even if she didn't make it out of here. 

The second arrow came out easier, and the third healed nearly the instant the head left his side. Or maybe not—it was getting harder to tell with nearly her entire vision obscured by thick, black water that was now begging her to just  _ let go,  _ but she refused to give in just yet. 

The silver pins in the dagger’s grip burned her hand as she gripped it, but they may as well have been splinters, the pain in her side was so overwhelming. She turned to see Vilkas’s silver eyes watching her from underneath a furred brow darker than the dark water, black as midnight, and somehow knew in her heart that he recognized her. That he knew she was currently saving his life. 

“Finish what we started,” she commanded him as she felt her pulse slow to a crawl—only seconds left. “Go back and find that cure. For Kodlak.”

The last thing she saw was the almost graceful arc of blood from Vilkas’s flank as she pulled the knife free with the last shred of her strength, and the final thing she heard before the darkness washed over her was his human voice repeatedly calling her name before angrily yelling at her for getting stabbed and poisoned.

_ So typical. _

She wondered if she managed to roll her eyes at him before she slipped away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic just wedged itself in my brain and would not let go, and I'm really enjoying writing in this universe so far! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Drop a comment and tell me what you think!
> 
> updated 17 Dec 2020 - minor edits, corrected "Alvor" to "Athis" because I'm a bad Skyrim fan who doesn't know her NPC's!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Suicidal Thoughts

Roslin attempted to crack her eyes open only a fraction, but felt an instant, acute regret—why in Talos’s name was it so damned  _ bright? _ She groaned in dismay, her voice rattling around in her throat like nails in a jar. 

“Roslin?” Arcadia’s lyrical voice floated through the thick air, seeming to come from everywhere in her half-asleep state. “Roslin, can you hear me?”

She grunted again, wondering if perhaps she actually  _ had _ swallowed a few nails—her throat felt dryer than parchment and just as fragile.

“You’re safe now,” Arcadia urged, weightless and formless as a dream. “You’re in Whiterun, in Jorrvaskr. You’ll be fine once that poison works its way out of you, but for now, you need to rest, alright?”

Roslin’s brow furrowed and it felt like her entire face was splitting in two—she wanted to open her eyes, but not if it meant being stabbed in the brain by the blinding light. She needed to get up, to see if Vilkas made it back, to be with him for Kodlak’s funeral, to find that cure… she had so much to do. 

She tried to get up, but her limbs now weighed as much as a mammoth each, and she felt herself slipping away again with the effort to move them even an inch.

“I said  _ rest,  _ Roslin,” Arcadia scolded, pressing gently on her shoulder. “Even the Dragonborn needs healing sometimes.”

No, she didn’t. She needed to fight the tide pulling her down. The  _ Dragonborn _ needed to… do something. Ysmir, she couldn’t even remember. The darkness reared up suddenly, reclaiming her as easily as a lost ship in the ocean.

She drifted then, between dreams and nothing, riding tides of consciousness that shifted between serenity and violence until she surfaced again an indeterminate amount of time later. She barely achieved something approximating consciousness as disparate threads of sensation settled into the sounds of a door clicking shut and heavy footfalls that stepped closer and closer to where she lay. 

A heavy, vaguely annoyed sigh stirred the hair at her temple, saving her the trouble of wondering who it was this time. 

“Arcadia told me you tried to wake up today,” Vilkas mused, sounding half-asleep but fully irritated before a sudden breeze brushed over the left half of her upper body like a blanket had been tossed back, exposing her skin to the cool air. 

She was most definitely more awake now than she was before but still didn’t have the energy to shiver, let alone cover herself up. She had little to be ashamed of, anyway.

But then he touched her side, and suddenly there was no inch of her skin that wasn’t on fire. And she was certainly ashamed of just how quickly a pleasant, melting sensation spread across her body—just how long had it been since anyone had touched her so tenderly when she was awake enough to feel it?

His calloused fingers were far more delicate than they had any right to be, ghosting over her flesh, probing her side before— _ ow,  _ peeling off a poultice that was so stuck to the wound, it felt like he was taking off a section of skin. Strangely, she found that she didn’t mind—it was a bracing sort of pain that kept her from fully disintegrating into a puddle on the bed, that kept her focused on the present.

“It’s healing well,” he noted, igniting more fires under her skin as he moved his hand further up her ribs to drag something cool and damp over and around the hole in her side, “but she was adamant that you remain in bed for two more days. I warned her you would fight it, that you can’t even sit still for an hour.” 

There was a light rustling of leaves, and the sharp smell of healing herbs filled her nose, but the realization that he had prior knowledge of the state of her wound was dizzying—exactly how many times had he done this?

“She then suggested,” he continued over the gentle grinding of a pestle, “as a jest, I’m sure—that I could always bind you to the bed if necessary.”

Her heart swooped alarmingly in her chest as his words lilted through her ears and a sweet ache settled low in her belly. She didn’t know how she knew it, but by the Divines, this was probably the first time he had ever  _ really _ smiled at her, and she was too damned weak to even open her eyes. 

She couldn’t help but feel a tingle at Arcadia’s idea—if being forced to stay in bed meant more of his warm hands and soft touches, she supposed she could suffer the jittering unrest of confinement. 

She heard a small splash of water as he began to form a paste of the ground herbs—the tide of her arousal ebbed a bit as she wondered when Vilkas had become practiced in alchemy. 

“However,” his words slowed as he focused on carefully dabbing the paste over her wound, “I doubt that would earn your forgiveness any faster.” 

A deep confusion pulled her away from her heady desire as well as the completely engrossing and luxurious comfort of someone caring for her like this—what could he possibly need her forgiveness for? 

The question thudded through her murky thoughts like a cannonball hitting the floor. Putting quite a few things into sharp relief.

For as long as she’d known him, she’d never seen him apologize for anything—he’d boasted, taunted, and threw around thinly-veiled derision without ever expressing a degree of remorse for it. The river of his pride ran wide and deep, and until now, she never thought a bridge of humility was possible. 

But here he was at her bedside, treating and bandaging a wound that wasn’t his fault by any stretch—pressing a strip of linen onto her side with only enough pressure to adhere it to the paste and no more—and suddenly that bridge was right at her feet, ready to be crossed. 

If only she could make her stupid legs work. 

He sat back with a sigh, his work complete, remaining so still and silent for a while, utterly invisible to her senses, that she could no longer tell if he was still there. And suddenly, the black tide was rising once more, making even listening feel like a monumental task.

But then he leaned forward, and like a lifeline, slipped a hand beneath the blanket and gripped her wrist tightly, keeping the water at bay a while longer.

“Wake up soon, Roslin,” he said as his thumb worried away at the back of her hand, drawing and kneading at her skin in a way that was both calming and distracting. “Your test is not yet finished.”

She somehow knew he was smirking again, but she couldn’t help the spark of indignance that flared in her chest, giving her just enough strength to respond in the smallest way.

His thumb stilled on her skin as her fingers twitched, probably wondering if he’d imagined it, but she didn’t have enough energy to try again as the water rose higher still.

Her awareness was slipping out of reach, narrowing further and further to only allow the sensation of his fingers cautiously slipping through hers before she was lost to the tide again. 

The next time she surfaced, there was more.

More sensations, more control, more connection to her body. She could breathe in and feel her chest rise and fall, she could feel the cotton bedding under her skin, the border of the scratchy wool blanket ending across her collarbones. 

The dull ache throbbing in her left side. 

She lifted her fingers, flexed them into fists, not daring to open her eyes just yet, and was gratified when she wasn’t immediately swallowed by black seas. On the contrary, she felt… Good. Surprisingly good for nearly dying.

She continued her careful assessment of her body, gently moving and flexing first her arms, then her shoulders. No large movements, just feeling muscle move over bone, reveling in the texture of the bedding, much finer than she was used to— 

Just where was she? This couldn’t be her bed in Jorrvaskr. This one was far softer and had no weird lumps. 

Her lids dragged unpleasantly against her eyes as she slowly opened them to see the curved ceiling of what must have been Kodlak’s room. 

She gently tilted her head to look around—by all standards, the space was furnished simply, but it was luxurious compared to her skinny bunk down the hall, and downright opulent compared to the threadbare bedroll she was raised in. 

As with any self-respecting Nord’s room, there were weapons on the walls—some old, some new—but more notably, there was a surprisingly large collection of books. Shelves and shelves of tomes more fitting for a court sorcerer than a retired warrior—some bound in exotic leather bearing odd runes she’d never seen before. 

Her fingers itched in curiosity even though she would never be able to read the more esoteric texts because she just  _ knew  _ that whatever plans Kodlak had to cure himself, they had to have been hatched here. The key had to be in one of these books. 

Or—she thought apprehensively—more likely, several of them. 

Maybe she could do it—if she had to stay in bed, maybe she could somehow become a quiet, studious bookworm, ink stains on her fingers, hair tied back in a knot, breathing in words on a page instead of air. 

She felt her mouth twist into a grimace on its own—she’d never had the patience for that kind of thing. 

_ Ugh…  _ The stale taste of her own tongue made itself known as she frowned. She craned her neck some more, looking for something to drink nearby, and found a goblet on a table behind her head to the left, probably at the limit of her reach.

She stretched her arm out and half-turned onto her injured side, luxuriating in the movement but taking care not to summon the black tide again, until her fingers just caught the rim of the goblet.

And then it was like she'd completely lost her deft touch—her fingers spasmed instead of carefully gripping it, sending the goblet tumbling to the floor with a disappointing  _ clunk.  _

She rested her cheek on her extended arm, watching the water soak into the rug in annoyance, until footsteps sounded outside the room, heading in her direction. 

She sat up a bit as the door opened slightly. Farkas poked his head inside.

"Oh hey, you're awake," he stated in that wonderful Farkas way.

She smiled against her arm as they exchanged greetings. Farkas always had a steady, comforting presence that—at least until after the events of Driftshade—starkly contrasted his brother's.

"How you feeling?" He asked, crossing his arms.

She pursed her lips in consideration.

"Hungry. For some real food," she decided, meeting his eyes pointedly. 

He smirked—He was the only other companion whose appetite matched her own. 

“And tired,” she continued. “But also like I want to try to outrun a horse—how long have I been in this bed? When did we get back?”

_ And where is Vilkas? _

“Four days ago.” 

Her smile fell straight off her face as she pushed herself up to lean back on her elbows. 

_ “Four?”  _ She repeated dumbly. 

He nodded, and her gaze drifted as her mind raced—how could she have lost that much time? What if it was too late? What if his spirit had faded into nothing or however spirits move on? What if Kodlak— 

_ Oh, shit. _

“The funeral?” she asked suddenly, an older, different kind of pain gripping her chest. 

“Three days ago.” 

She flopped down onto her back gracelessly and felt the beginnings of the tide rise again, flowing after a wave of regret. She’d...  _ really _ wanted to say goodbye. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly she heard the sincerity. 

Her eyes stung, but she forced a few deep breaths to push the tide back down—she couldn’t let herself pass out now. 

“No, I’m—” She wiped her tears before turning her head towards him.  _ “—I’m _ sorry. You knew him a lot longer than I did.”

He nodded in consideration. “Yeah.”

She studied him a moment longer, but his pulse was steady and his stoic features betrayed nothing.

“How are  _ you  _ doing?” She asked gently.

“It’s rough,” he shrugged matter-of-factly. “I miss Kodlak.”

She nodded sympathetically, grateful for the way he didn’t mince words. No fake  _ I’m fine _ ’s or  _ he’s in a better place.  _ Speaking to Farkas was always refreshing that way. 

“But I got to kick in a falmer nest to the east yesterday,” he continued, brightening a bit. “Didn’t even have to shift to get ‘em all. Felt more normal doing that than I had all week.” 

Her grin felt like it could split her face in half—in a good way, this time. 

“It’s the simple things, right?” She quipped, trying to keep the normalcy going. 

He grunted in agreement through his smile, and they passed a moment in silence until her dry throat reminded her what had called him here in the first place.

“Could you—”

“So, there’s something going on with you and Vilkas,” he suddenly said, and she felt her blood freeze. 

She tried to keep her features even, her pulse steady, but she had no idea whether she was successful. 

“Oh?” She asked discreetly, willing her nerves to stop buzzing. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, eyes going wide like it was obvious. Her stomach felt like a pit. “I mean… You two leave without telling anyone, gone all night…”

He continued talking without her input, heedless of the way her body now felt as rigid and twisted as an oak burl. Ysmir, she hadn’t felt this kind of stress since Father caught her with his smoking pipe. 

“And he’s spent most of his time in here since.”

Memories of Vilkas changing her bandage and gripping her hand surfaced, and suddenly it was much too warm under the blankets. 

“I don’t know what any of it means,” Farkas sighed. “He’s just… different, now.”

_ You’re telling me.  _

Either Vilkas has always been tolerable and it was  _ her  _ fault they fought so much, or something about losing Kodlak caused a massive personality shift. Roslin wasn’t sure which was worse. 

But there wasn’t anything to talk about with her and Vilkas, was there? Not that it would be a problem if there were. It was never explicitly stated, but relationships between Companions were perfectly allowable. Roslin knew for a fact that Aela and Skjor had a thing before he was killed.

That wasn’t it—it was the idea that she’d already put Vilkas into a little box in her head, sealed it, and placed it in a storeroom somewhere.

It meant that she was wrong about him. And she hated being wrong. 

“Well…,” she swallowed thickly, “I’m sure he’s just—”

“Is she awake?” The man in question’s voice sounded from the hall. 

Just when her nerves were starting to settle, Vilkas walked into the room and sent every ounce of blood in her body racing. 

Both men eyed her carefully, hearing the shift. 

“Just, ah…” she stammered, affecting a large smile, “just glad to see you’re alright!” 

But he just kept  _ looking _ at her, and she quickly became extremely aware of how little she was wearing under the blankets—just her breast band and some kind of light… skirt thing that was definitely not something she owned. 

_ Shit, he’s seen her basically topless.  _

Was this how it was always going to be, now? Reduced to a stuttering puddle of anxiety whenever he so much as looked her way?

“Yes,” he responded at length, and she had to remember that he couldn’t actually read minds as he turned to Farkas. “Brother, would you give us the room?”

She’d never been more terrified at the thought of being alone with a man—especially one she thought she knew but apparently didn’t. 

“You know I don’t like secrets,  _ brother,”  _ Farkas replied tersely. “But if something big comes up…”

“I promise I’ll tell you as soon as there’s something to know.”

Farkas gave him a doubtful look that made Roslin wonder how many times Vilkas had broken that promise but retreated through the door anyway, taking most of her courage with him.

"I imagine Farkas already asked you," he began, stepping close enough to hear his heartbeat clearly, "but how are you feeling?

_ You mean apart from being a sweaty, nervous wreck? _

"Oh, you know" she gestured with a hand noncommittally, "okay for nearly dying."

He grimaced a bit at that—something like guilt passing over his face and tempering her nerves from sheer curiosity.

"I am sorry about… about the funeral," he said, displaying yet more unexpected courtesy. "It couldn't wait—we didn’t return until well after sundown."

They weren’t even gone a full day—it felt like much longer.

"How  _ did  _ we get back, anyway?"

His brow furrowed a bit. "The same way we came, how else?"

She managed a small smile at the picture forming in her head.

"So you trotted all the way back to Whiterun," she smirked, "with a knife wound in your ass?"

He scowled uncomfortably, and she couldn’t help the flood of satisfaction at causing him some agony of her own. 

Even if he didn’t know what she was doing. She was surprisingly petty at the moment. 

“It healed  _ before _ I shifted,” he replied through his teeth, “and I see you are back to your usual insolence.”

She fought the urge to stick out her tongue.

“What happened?” She asked after a quiet moment. “After I passed out?"

He tilted his head in consideration before settling into the chair at her bedside.

“I bandaged your wound to the best of my ability,” he sighed, “though according to Arcadia, it was... shoddy work.”

Oof, that must have stung. Although she thought that someone who knew alchemy would also know how to dress a wound—he must have just been rushed. 

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking uncomfortably like he was about to confess something.

“I carried you out,” he said, his voice like iron, cold and unyielding. “I… had to hold you upright in the saddle, that’s why we got back so late. You had… dreams. You spoke quite a bit.”

_ Oh, no.  _

“Of someone named... Roran?”

She screwed her eyes shut against the sudden pain—it was a name she’d hardly spoken aloud, and hearing it from Vilkas, who heard it without context or knowledge, made it a thousand times worse.

“Just… someone,” she deflected, approximating a shrug. 

By some miracle, he let the question go. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Someone like him was bound to have secret regrets, too. Though in his position, she’d have far more tact than to just… 

She mentally shook her head. “Did you need to talk about something?” She asked, eager to regain some semblance of control in this conversation. 

“Yes,” he replied, reaching for something on the bedside table, out of her line of sight. She swallowed as he leaned closer and realized she still hadn’t gotten a damn drink. 

He pulled back and held up a leather-bound journal with a knowing glint in his eye. 

“That your diary?” She snarked, nearly out of emotional energy for today. 

“It was Kodlak’s,” he gently corrected, opening it to a bookmarked page.

“Please tell me it has a simple list of directions for saving his soul so we don’t have to comb through his entire library.”

“It’s enough,” he replied, handing her the open journal.

_ Ysgramor… without his weapon… eternal flame… commune with the Five Hundred… proof of the witch’s death… spirit of the wolf… _

He was right—it was more than she’d hoped for. She held in her hands the old man’s ticket to Sovngarde.

“So all we need is—”

“—Wuuthrad. Eorlund’s been hammering away on it for a couple of days, now.”

Her brows rose—the last she knew, they were still several shards short of a whole axe. There was a joke in that somewhere. 

“Where was the rest of it?”

He fidgeted in the chair for a moment, wrestling with an answer.

“Driftshade,” he admitted at length. “I didn’t think—I didn’t even realize the shards would be there. Aela had to retrieve them.” 

She watched him stew in his guilt for a moment before relieving him.

“Thank you,” she said, thumbing the spine of the journal, “for saving my life instead of rummaging around for bits of metal in a fortress.”

He returned her hesitant smile and damnit, it felt like flying. 

“You saved mine as well,” he replied, eyes dancing. “Makes us even, as far as I’m concerned.”

Always debts and consequences with him—couldn’t people just do nice things for each other? Like holding open doors, Offering baked goods, pulling silver daggers out of asses… 

She considered their balance, so to speak, for a moment. 

“I suppose I can owe you another favor,” she said, trying not to imagine Vilkas’ ears perking up as he sat forward in his chair, “if you do something for me.”

He spread his hands questioningly. 

“Name it.”

Roslin tossed her hand over the side of the bed to point at the overturned goblet and still-damp carpet beneath his boots.

“Get me a  _ fucking drink.” _

* * *

She lasted another day on bed rest before practically running out the door.

Not that Vilkas was surprised—he probably wouldn't have lasted much longer, what with Arcadia's constant fussing, the fate of a hero's soul hanging in the balance, and the half-there but eternal itch for blood that never slept.

He wouldn't give in to the call. He meant what he said at Driftshade—he never wanted to shift again. And if this cure worked for Kodlak, perhaps there was a chance he could make good on that promise to himself.

Vilkas knew exactly who he was, both as a man and as a wolf. Even though he'd yet to learn to control his beast form and never remembered anything once he shifted back, he'd faced the terrible aftermath of the transformation more than enough. Much to Aela’s consternation, he no longer wanted to control it—he wanted it  _ gone. _

Perhaps that blind rage was part of who he was in the past when Jergen left him and his brother on the steps of Jorrvaskr with hardly a word and Vilkas had more than enough anger for the two of them, but he'd grown. He'd changed. And it was all because Kodlak saw something in him worth keeping. 

It hadn’t been easy, for him or the old man, and Vilkas knew he had only himself to blame. He was a petulant, arrogant little shit who was made to do more pushups than he could count for mouthing off, showing up late to train, or stashing mead in his bunk before he’d grown a proper beard. 

Kodlak had broken that boy, but Vilkas had come out of it a man. And he didn’t want to be angry anymore.

“Here.” 

Roslin shoved a pungent length of cloth into his hands—he had to wrinkle his nose against the smell and she rolled her eyes at his reaction.

“Would you rather smell lavender oil or week-old hagraven corpses?” She needled him, before winding a scarf around the lower half of her face.

He sighed as he followed suit—he admitted some days were more difficult than others. 

Truthfully, he didn’t mind the gentle, herbal smell on its own. It was that he knew Roslin used lavender oil in her hair from the hours he’d spent behind her on a horse, and now the scent had… complicated associations. 

But she was right—he’d much rather smell her than the stench of death. Not that he'd tell her.

The path to the cave was simultaneously overgrown and rotting—twisted, dead trees and rank offerings to shrines made of animal bones and skin. It was like the ground had been scorched, the very life drained from the land around the mouth, which looked uncomfortably like the maw of some great earthen monstrosity, sharp rocks lining the entrance like teeth. 

Despite only having been here once before, Roslin barrelled ahead without a torch, heedless of the setting sun or the uneven ground.    
  
“Slow down,” he called after her before ducking in. “I’m not carrying you back to Jorrvaskr a second time.”

“Sure you will,” she replied, nearly out of sight as he fumbled with a flint and steel and a branch. “I am excellent company.” 

He finally got the damn thing lit, but when he looked up to follow her, there was a light as if from a campfire glowing around a bend in the cave. 

He jogged after her, the cloth around his mouth pulling against his lips every time he drew breath until the tunnel broke into a wide cavern with half a dozen other passages leading out. 

Roslin said she cleaned out this place and he believed her, but that doesn’t mean something else didn’t move in since then, so he kept his guard up, slowing his pace to a walk as he looked around. 

The light was a campfire in the very center of the room, sunk into the floor with carved, concentric circles rippling out, stone runes set into the earth at odd intervals. A ritual chamber—he’d expect nothing less from hagravens. 

“Each one had their own nest down these tunnels,” Roslin said, pointing at all the mouths biting their way through the earth like giant worms. "Start on opposite sides and meet in the middle?"

"We don't know if something else has taken up residence here," he shook his head. "It would be more prudent to stay together."

She tossed her braid over her shoulder derisively and he hadn’t realized such an action could be derisive. 

"Oh, don't you worry," she called, turning to walk backward as she practically swaggered away, “I’ll save you from the dead hagravens.”

He wasn’t sure which was worse—somehow knowing that she was smirking at him under that scarf, or having to tear his eyes away from her swaying hips when she turned again. 

His blood began singing in a new, unfamiliar way as he watched her, and breathing in lavender with every breath was not helping the situation. 

He turned on his heel to face the nearest tunnel and tried to think of the grisly mess that awaited him in great detail so maybe he could stop thinking about the perfect curve of her ass, how it looked like it was made for his hand. 

It was too much—the thought burned, it festered, more vivid than a fever dream. He pulled the scarf from his nose and purposefully filled his lungs with the foulest smell he’d ever experienced to wipe the image from his mind. His eyes watered, he had to brace a hand against the slick tunnel wall, but the pain was worth it. His mind was his own again. He had control. 

As well as a headache—Ysmir, that smell was terrible. 

It certainly wasn’t the first time his thoughts had… wandered around her, but those occasions had been happening more and more frequently since Driftshade, especially since he had nearly forced Arcadia to teach him how to change her poultice at night to ensure it wouldn't become infected.

He thought the choice had been driven by guilt, but at this point, it was at least partially something else. 

Either way, he had only himself to blame for what he’d seen. And what he’d seen was a beautiful, fierce, supremely aggravating woman at death's door. 

And it had been his fault. 

He shoved the scarf back over his nose, raised his torch, and stalked further into the cave, eager to regain focus. 

The tunnel ended with a chamber containing a shallow pool, in which floated the swollen corpses of a hagraven and two frostbite spiders. His stomach turned in revulsion as he thrust the butt of his torch into the gravel at his feet—couldn't she have killed them on dry land? Or simply decapitated them all the first time she was here? Piled the heads neatly in the ritual chamber? Or even just brought them all back to Jorrvaskr and damn what the guards think?

But there was hardly ever a rhyme or reason to her actions, so why was he expecting any now?

The scum at the surface of the fetid pool swirled as he waded in, sending the corpses bobbing and drifting. He gripped the mantle of what had once been feathers framing the crone’s face and pulled the creature onto the muddy gravel shore, his boots crunching wetly and echoing in the near-dark.

He didn’t mean to look into its face, but as the torchlight fell across its face after days floating in the water, the crone’s once-gaunt features had filled out. And with its beady, black eyes closed, it now looked horribly, uncomfortably human. He felt a strange pang of sadness and pain for the woman it had been. 

He shook his head, closing his eyes. This reaction was unconscionable—though hagravens were once human witches, they were so drawn to power that they knowingly cursed themselves for the chance at more. He should not be feeling this degree of regret. They  _ chose _ to become monsters. They did this to themselves.

Vilkas had never really trusted in premonitions, and would happily drive away any charlatan who claimed they could see the future, but in this tiny, forgotten, vile cave, he swore he saw a vision of his own fate if the cure didn’t work.

He couldn’t stay human forever. He couldn’t keep buying the traveling Khajiit’s decoction to stave off the transformation every full moon—the damned cat charged an outrageous price.

But he couldn’t give in to the beast blood knowing that he’d be letting loose a true monster. One that caused the slaughter at Driftshade and committed even worse atrocities. That didn’t feel or reason and only thought of blood.

He owed it to the innocent to keep it contained. 

Vilkas could only pray that if this mad plan of Kodlak’s didn’t work, if the caravan didn’t come and the full moon was imminent, he’d have the courage to do it himself.

He grimly set his jaw before drawing the long-handled axe he’d borrowed from Jorrvaskr’s armory, stepping into position and feeling the weight in his hands. 

He lifted the axe high over his head and struck true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vilkas is an angsty, angsty boi and I kind of love him. 
> 
> thank you so much for reading! drop a comment and tell me what you think!
> 
> updated 17 Dec 2020: minor edits for continuity and clarity


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: suicidal thoughts

Ysgramor’s axe was the most incredible thing Roslin had ever laid her eyes upon. 

It truly was legendary, in every sense of the word, and every Nordic child knew the tale of its creation from the time they could speak. 

The stories said it was forged on the deck of a ship fleeing Skyrim, when the first Atmoran settlement of Saarthal was sacked by elves. Ysgramor wept tears of pure ebony, so hard and bitter was his grief, so his son Yngol, the greatest Atmoran blacksmith who ever lived, made a weapon in the heart of a great northern storm, using lightning strikes to heat the metal and the churning sea to cool it. 

Roslin knew it was just a story and probably not based in reality, but when she was faced with the weapon itself, the screaming visage of an elf and the deep black ebony that bent and rippled with the light like water… She chose to let herself believe, because damnit, this felt  _ good.  _

It felt  _ so good _ to be a Nord again, watching Eorlund present a finally fully intact Wuuthrad to Ysgramor’s spiritual descendants, seeing identical looks of reverence on their faces and knowing it was reflected in hers as well. 

For the first time since crossing the border back into Skyrim all those months ago, she finally felt like she’d come home, even if she hadn’t really, yet. 

“What’re you all staring at?” Eorlund groused, his eyes suddenly dark in the underforge’s dull light. “It’s just an axe.” 

Roslin felt her eyes go wide, her blood running cold in revulsion, as her entire being screamed  _ no, no it absolutely isn’t,  _ all under a mounting confusion as to why Eorlund “Gods be praised” Grey-Mane was suddenly forsaking his ancestors— 

When to her left, Farkas began to chuckle, low and contained at first, but growing into full, open-mouthed guffawing as Roslin watched, the realization slowly dawning. 

She turned to see Aela grinning without even a hint of viciousness and Eorlund smirking encouragingly at his own jest, and felt a smile break across her own features, the warmth of companionship flooding in her chest, and disparate threads of hope weaving, winding, hardening into certainty. There was no longer a single doubt in her mind that they could honor Kodlak’s final wish. 

And when she looked into Vilkas’ face, his eyes glinting in the shadows, even there glowed a spark. 

* * *

“We’re never going to get to the tomb at this rate!” Aela growled, tossing the map to the snowy ground in frustration, firelight blazing across her features and making her green eyes glow dangerously.

Vilkas sighed from where he stood beside Revka, double-checking the straps holding Wuuthrad in place at the mare’s side—he needed to make a more concentrated effort to not leave himself alone with Aela. Conversations with her of late only ended in the same bitter argument, and the closer the night of the full moon grew, the more his patience for her waned.

But Roslin had volunteered to fill everyone’s waterskins, and Farkas had to take a piss, so… 

He stepped towards the fire, bending at the waist to pick up  _ his  _ map.

“Not never,” he reminded her, brushing off the snow. “We will arrive in four days’ time.”

She only scoffed. “We  _ could  _ make it in less than two,” she replied, her eyes piercing him like emeralds.

He saw the bait but refused to take it, holding her gaze defiantly for a moment while he rolled up the map.

“That is no way to transport Wuuthrad,” he grumbled, turning again to store it in his saddlebag. 

“I could do it—you know I could,” she nearly spat, her tone just shy of hostility. Out of the corner of his eye, Vilkas saw one of her knees jiggling restlessly and knew the combination of the waxing moons and the sound of the wildlife moving outside their camp was making her especially restless. 

Aela would never admit it—perhaps it was a female thing—but she would always become… twitchier at night the fuller the moons grew. He felt the pull of the blood, too, but he was far more practiced at ignoring it than she. 

Because to Aela, the blood wasn’t a curse, but a gift—as real and welcomed as the sword on Vilkas’ back, and she’d mastered it similarly until she began spending nearly as much time in a wolf’s skin as her own. And Vilkas didn’t have to wonder which form she preferred, given her attitude about taking horses to the tomb. 

After all, when is a curse not a curse? When the afflicted  _ wants _ it.

But Vilkas knew better than Aela.

The blood controlled them—exercising its will every second the moons were out, pulling and pressing on their veins with a heavy hand. They were cursed, all of them, and even though Aela was as deft and efficient a hunter as a wolf as she was a woman, even though Vilkas envied her control to a degree, their will was not the blood’s. No matter how much they might align for Aela. 

He spared one petty moment wondering if she’d have failed in her mastery had her first experience matched his own. 

The thought was unworthy of him. Unworthy of one of the bearers of Wuuthrad itself—they’d all four agreed to share the burden and honor, and he would do well to remember that they were bound not only by duty but shared grief. Everyone was on edge with Kodlak’s death fresh in their minds, and the moons only exacerbated the feeling. They all deserved more patience. 

Even so, he refused to enter the tomb as a wolf. It felt like sacrilege. 

“We will not dishonor ourselves,” he said, grunting a bit as he sat by the fire, “or our legacy by tainting Ysgramor’s final resting place with the beast blood.”

Invoking the First Harbinger seemed to quell her misgivings, at least for the moment. Aela might be more wolf than woman at times, but she was a Companion before anything else. 

Her pulse backed off as her jostling knee slowed, his admonition taking root as stared into the fire. She looked up after a few thoughtful moments, her features softening as she met his gaze over the flames. 

“I wish you’d let me help you,” she whispered. 

He sighed. “Aela—”

“Come hunt with me,” she pleaded, leaning forward. “It’s been two years since the last time.”

He paused—he knew precisely how long it had been, but was surprised she remembered as well. A shame she didn’t also remember that last time, he’d bolted once he had transformed, and she found him over the ruined body of a fisherman.

His answer would be the same as the last dozen times she asked. A shame she didn't remember that, either. 

_ “No,  _ Aela.” 

She huffed in frustration, eyes blazing once more. “How can you live with yourself while denying what you are?”

_ I don’t intend to.  _

He hung his head as the thought rang clear as a bell through his mind, but he wouldn’t voice it. Let Aela believe he was just a stubborn ass and leave it at that. It may be true regardless, but she didn’t need to know that the previous full moon a little over two weeks ago was potentially his last. 

Four days. Four days until his fate was sealed either way. 

He waited until the dust settled around that terrible realization, and found that Aela’s pestering suddenly held an altogether different meaning for him—it was friendship even in the face of conflicting ideals. And a part of him loved Aela for her tenacity—she was his sister by one sort of blood, after all. 

And suddenly, he was no longer in any mood to argue. About anything.

“When we return to Whiterun,” he began, worrying circles into the back of his glove to hide the lie, “perhaps I could... try again.” 

Their eyes met once more over the fire, and that part of him twisted painfully with affection as Aela gave him a small smile.

“Thank you, brother.” 

* * *

Roslin sighed, letting her head fall against the tree at her back with a dull  _ thunk.  _

She didn’t normally take to eavesdropping, but filling four waterskins only took so much time, and she'd come to hate that heady aura of an interrupted conversation that she’d created so many times through negligence and impatience. 

So somehow, listening in on words that weren’t meant for her felt kind of like turning over a new leaf, even if it was a bit rotten. 

_ How can you live with yourself while denying what you are? _

Aela could only be referring to the transformation. Aside from Driftshade, she'd gathered over her time as a Companion that Vilkas disliked shifting, preferring to fight as a man. Roslin understood as she felt the same. Every time she shifted herself, it felt like she was constantly one step away from losing control, and it was impossible for her to know where that step might be.

But the thought of months or possibly  _ years  _ without shifting, of feeling the blood roiling underneath her skin without release? It was no wonder Vilkas was so cranky all the time, so tightly wound and stern. 

She suppressed a shiver—by Ysmir, ever since he said  _ please  _ to her, he’d been quickly and silently checking boxes she didn’t even know her body had.

Tall?  _ Check. _

Dark?  _ Double-check. _

An attractively surly counter to her own sparkling personality?  _ Check. _

But if the last week had taught her anything, it was that he also had uncharted depths just as perilous as Blackreach, and though her instincts were practically  _ screaming _ at her to take the leap anyway and figure things out as she went along, this was  _ Vilkas.  _

Nearly his entire countenance was constructed to keep people at arm’s length, and she’d probably never earn the same degree of trust he’d obviously given Aela long ago. 

Roslin had fought with him, nearly died with him, and she doubted anyone besides Farkas knew what it felt like for Vilkas to watch over and take care of them, but it still felt like there was a cavernous void between them, one that had grown wider with each argument. 

She thought back to that bridge, how he’d made himself humble to build it, even if it was only in her mind. Maybe she could build one of her own in him. Maybe he’d start to trust her then.

Mara knows she could use a lesson in modesty, herself. 

She pushed off from her tree, feeling both strangely hollow and full of ache, but when she broke through the ring of trees surrounding the camp, he wasn't there. His brother sat in front of the fire, carefully running a whetstone over his sword while Aela pored over a map with an intensity that was nearly frightening. 

She set two of the skins beside them and one in the tent she was to share with Aela before turning to face her shield-siblings.

“Where’s Vilkas?” She asked, raising the fourth skin in front of her in explanation, but Aela only offered an irritated eye-roll before returning her focus to the map.

Roslin stared at her in confusion until Farkas spoke.

“He’s through there,” he grunted, pointing to a break in the trees that looked to lead deep into the forest. 

Despite the sunset an hour ago, it wasn’t terribly late yet, and Roslin had been wandering through forests for as long as she could remember, but her boots suddenly felt stuck to the ground, the skin of water weighing heavily in her hands as she remembered the last time she’d found him separate from the pack. Thinly-veiled hostility, accusations, threats of suicide. She could easily leave his water by his tent and save herself the trouble. Spend the evening by the fire, talking with Farkas and convincing Aela to put that map away and join them.

No one would guilt her for leaving him out there—alone, with only the trees for company. 

She sighed as she looked deep into the darkness before her and felt the guilt anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this update took so long - this chapter really got away from me, so I split it in order to reconstruct the second part, which was giving me like 10 kinds of frustration!
> 
> Thank you for reading! Drop a comment and tell me what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

Roslin followed the narrow path that looked like it had been made by the wildlife, winding around the trees instead of through them, before coming upon a clearing and, in its center, a ring of stones. 

If not for the northern lights blazing overhead in the clear night, she would have missed him, leaning against a hunk of granite that towered over the rest, a bottle of something presumably much stronger than water in his hand. 

“Feel like sharing?” She asked softly as she advanced into the circle, startling him slightly, but she was glad to see that there was no hostility as he took in her presence. In fact, there might have been the barest hint of a smile on his lips, though it could have easily been either a trick of the light or her own wishful thinking—either way, her trepidation softened.

“You found me away from camp, alone, drinking in the dark,” he replied, contemplating the bottle in his hands before taking another pull. She tried and failed to not notice the angle of his jaw as he swallowed, the corded muscle of his neck working under skin...

“What do you think?” He finished, and she had to force her eyes away from his tongue darting out to catch a drop of liquor at the corner of his mouth.

Has discovered a way to make the act of drinking wildly attractive?  _ Check. _

“Well, I’m—” She hesitated, feeling suddenly off-balance on the perfectly still earth. “I’m happy to keep your secret alcohol a secret, but, ah.... you can’t get something for nothing, you know.” 

She took a single step forward, holding out her free hand and beckoning with her fingers. He considered the gesture for a moment, eyeing both her glove and her face before handing over the bottle with a grunt.

She tossed the waterskin onto the ground and sat against a short, neighboring stone a bit more than an arm’s length away before lifting the bottle to her own lips. It was mead—full-bodied and hearty, with a hint of… juniper? It was lovely—no wonder he wanted to keep it to himself.

She begrudgingly returned the bottle before leaning her head back against her stone, far enough to watch the lights shimmer through the trees. The companionable silence was very nearly comfortable, and she was content to simply share the space until she felt a nudge of cold glass at her arm and a penetrating warmth that had little to do with the mead.

The heavy sweetness was quickly taking its toll as they passed the bottle back and forth, and even though her drinks were courteous sips at most, barely enough to wet her tongue, the juniper lingered. And the memories came dripping back the more it built like they always did when she stayed too still for too long. 

Until her heart suddenly felt too full, positively overflowing with emotion with no outlet, save one. 

She took a deep breath, watching the mist swirl in the air before her eyes, gathering her courage and hoping she could somehow build a bridge out of sadness and disappointment while half-drunk. 

She chose to start simply. “Have I ever told you where I’m from?” 

She braced herself for the sensation of shattering glass, a quiet moment reduced to dust under her impatient heel, but it didn’t come. Like the air around them had been silently asking to be filled the whole time.

Somehow, this moment felt like the right time to talk and hope it would quell the ache somehow. 

“No,” he replied, raising the bottle to his lips again. 

“Dawnstar,” she began, shifting against her rock as she searched for a more comfortable angle, twisting her neck to watch him. “My father settled there after the Great War.” 

“Mm,” he acknowledged to the trees, the bulk of his attention elsewhere. 

She sighed. She didn’t exactly blame him for not listening completely—they had returned to largely ignoring each other over the last few days and it wasn’t like they shared things from their pasts in the first place. 

But she knew how to make it relevant—to answer a question he’d probably held on to for a week. 

“His… his name was Roran.” 

The name pulled his gaze back to her, the bottle hanging forgotten in his hand as something like sympathy lined his eyes. She was surprised at how much it stung, dropping her eyes to where her fingers twisted together in her lap.

“Who was he?” Vilkas asked softly after a moment.

A flurry of images rushed behind her eyes—light and dark, the quiet moments and earth-shaking events that made up a life. Where to begin? It all felt like a tangle.

“He, ah…” she shook her head, trying to clear the fog to find  _ something.  _ Something real. “He taught me how to swing an axe.”

_ Small, soft hands gripping a smooth haft, numb as my knees sunk deep into the falling afternoon snow—Try again. I feel the alignment in my grip, I push and pull just like he taught me, but the blade bounces off the bark, stinging my hands painfully—a disappointed sigh. Try again. _

“He was a soldier?” Vilkas nudged her with the bottle again. She accepted it gratefully—she’d need it. 

She took a deep swig, grimacing as the hit of the alcohol hit her all at once. “M-mm,” she shook her head. “A miller. Built his own just outside town.”

“I thought Dawnstar was a mining town,” he mused as she returned the bottle.

“Forges need fuel,” she shrugged.  _ “People _ need fuel. He had us working from the moment we could walk.”

She looked down at her hands again. Her thumb compulsively rubbed at the hard callouses under her gloves—layers and layers and layers of hard skin that sometimes made her self-conscious of touching someone with an uncovered hand.

_ Cracked blisters, so many of them, bleeding through the bandages day after day after day—They’ll heal, I promise. It won’t hurt so much then—Easy for mom to say with her delicate skin, soft and smooth from sewing and cooking—Dad’s calling. My axe is waiting… Wish I could throw it into the sea. _

“Where is he now?” Vilkas asked cautiously, watching her hands worry away at each other.

Without even thinking, she responded—before guilt could steal her words again. 

“He’s dead.” 

The word hung in the air like a curse. 

She had to blink past the sudden emotion—pain mixing with remorse, roiling bright and angry in her chest for having been denied for so long. It was the first time she’d acknowledged it out loud, and saying the words made it terrifyingly real, settling deeper and deeper in her gut the longer they echoed. 

Her breath hitched on its own and her lips twisted to fight back a sob—She wasn’t a crier. And she  _ would not cry _ in front of him. She didn’t want that kind of pity.

She heard a shift beside her, leaves sliding over grass, before a heavy weight settled on her shoulder. 

“I’m... sorry,” he whispered. She heard the sentiment but didn’t feel it—they were just more hollow words, formless and weightless, drifting away in the breeze.

But it meant something that he  _ tried, _ at least. That he was still here, listening and trying to understand these fractured bits of her life that still kept digging into her skin like slivers of glass.

She felt like she’d extracted one or two, but she needed to get them  _ all _ out, every single one… or she feared they’d slice right through her. 

“I haven’t—” she hesitated, feeling the resistant pull in her skin but pushing forward anyway, focusing on the warmth of the mead curling in her belly and the steady pressure of Vilkas’ hand.

“I haven’t been…  _ home _ yet. Since before all this...” she gestured vaguely around them, “...started.”

She forced a breath, feeling almost flayed, exposed to the air without the splinter filling the wound—everything felt sharper, from the dead grass beneath her to the frozen air in her lungs. 

“How long?” He asked. 

Her mind staggered between wondering how long it had been and violently reminding herself that she knew  _ precisely _ how long. 

_ Yelling. So much yelling—Don’t go, Roslin. Will you write? Don’t bother writing. Why are you doing this? You’re being selfish! I’ll miss you, Roslin. Don’t come back, Roslin—I love them all, but I can’t spend my life here, they’ll understand—Dad’s not home, probably visiting mom’s grave again. Don’t need to see him. I told him last night I’d be leaving and he kept on looking straight through me.  _

“Two years next month,” she breathed, squeezing every bit of air out until her ribs felt like they might collapse—two years suddenly felt like an era, weighing heavily on her soul. And she knew she might have pushed too far.

“I haven’t seen Dawnstar in  _ two years,”  _ she repeated, feeling the panic bloom as her mouth began to function without permission. “I— I don’t even know if the mill’s still  _ there  _ or—  _ fuck,  _ my siblings… Jonna’s barely fifteen, what could she be  _ doing—?”  _

Vilkas quickly slid his hand across her back to her opposite shoulder, pulling her gently in to anchor her to his side and stop the manic rocking she hadn’t realized she’d been doing.

The panic didn’t stop but felt more contained under the gentle weight of his arm and the solid warmth of his body just barely touching her side. It faded slowly the more she focused on that heat—a reminder that she wasn’t alone this time.

“Sorry, I—” she shook her head, still fighting her lungs for air and thoroughly embarrassed that she’d had an attack in front of him. “Once I get started, it’s... hard to stop.”

She felt him gently shake his head. “It’s nothing. My brother did the same for me.” 

It took a fair bit of time to process what he’d just said, and even when she turned to look at him to see his eyes downcast, his features loose in sincerity, she wasn’t quite sure she believed him.

“You have them, too?” She asked, her voice sounding strange and distant to her own ears. 

“I… used to,” He nodded slowly, like he was forcing his body through the motion. “Usually during full moons.”

“Oh,” she replied uselessly, unsure of what to say, but grateful for the new thoughts to turn over in her mind like gleaming river stones, catching her attention and allowing her to move on from her own panic. 

She needed to say  _ something,  _ though—didn’t she? This was… big. A weakness exposed, many of her people would say. It meant a great deal to her that he trusted her with it.

"Thank you," she finally said, catching his eyes and hoping her own sincerity was evident, "for telling me."

"It was nothing," he repeated with a sigh, suggesting that it was anything but and releasing his grip on her shoulder to fold his hands in his lap.

They sat in silence a long while, and though Roslin missed the press of his arm, he hadn't moved from her side. She felt his presence at the edge of her senses as she closed her eyes just to breathe in the frozen air, feeling much lighter than before.

She was about to ask if there was any more mead left when he surprised her by speaking first. 

“Why,” he hesitated, picking over his words like they were thorns, “why did you tell  _ me _ all of that?”

The question struck her—right in the heart of why she was here in the first place.

She gave a half-shrug, an attempt at being casual that felt wrong under her skin. 

“I don’t know,” she replied, feeling more and more like a liar. “I figure we’re… kind of friends at this point.” 

He gave a light huff in disbelief.  _ “We’re _ friends?”

“I mean…” she hesitated, picking at a seam in her gloves. “Friends tell each other things. And I just told you a big thing. Therefore, we  _ are _ friends.” 

“That’s not how it works,” he grumbled, turning to look at her again. “And that isn’t an answer.”

She returned his gaze somewhat defiantly, unused to being questioned by him in this way.

“What do you mean?” She asked, delaying.

He considered for a moment before raising a brow and eyeing her carefully. 

“You sought me out at night, drank nearly all of my mead, and talked about your father.” 

She felt her cheeks color as she looked down—it seemed like a half-decent idea in her head at the time. Now she was worried that she’d significantly overstepped. 

“I would…  _ like _ to know why,” he gently finished, saying through his inflection that she could keep her secrets if she wished. 

She took a deep breath, considering. She brought her knees up to her chest to wrap her arms around her and it wasn’t to ward off the cold, but his piercing gaze that made her feel somehow even more vulnerable than she’d made herself earlier. 

“I just…” she started, twisting her lips against the urge to take him up on his offer of silence on the subject—he deserved to know after sitting with her and listening after she really did dump all of that in his lap.

His question was valid—she just needed the words.

But… damnit, words were  _ hard.  _ And the Divines themselves knew how shit she was with feelings. 

She forced a breath, trying to distill base instinct and emotion down into facts—into coherent sentences.

“I… haven’t told  _ anyone _ about my family,” she began haltingly, “because there’s been no one I’ve met who… knows what that’s like. To keep stuff like that down for a long time.”

Her chest felt a bit looser, but she couldn’t meet his eyes just yet. Ysmir, she was feeling less and less like the fearless Dragonborn of legend by the second. 

“But  _ you,  _ I mean…” she gestured aimlessly at the empty space in front of them, “You just… you seem like someone who does. And would understand."

At the edge of her vision, she saw him turn towards her again.

“No offense,” she added quickly.

He gave a single huff of what could have been laughter, much to her disbelief. “You are... not wrong,” he intoned. 

She slowly lifted her eyes to his and saw a wry smile pulling at his cheek, unfurling the knot in her chest and tugging at her insides in a deeply pleasant way. 

Their eyes lingered, searching and looking with new perspective, and while she still felt unsteady under his silver gaze, her gut now felt less like a rolling earthquake than a gently swaying bridge. 

He looked away suddenly, breaking the connection as he reached for something on his other side.

“Thank you,” he said as he turned back, holding the near-empty bottle out to her, “for telling me.” 

She felt a full grin break across her face as he echoed her earlier sentiment. She caught the bottle at the bottom, sliding the fingers of her opposite hand under his where they gripped the neck and igniting sparks that drifted up her arms. 

Even through two layers of leather and fur, he felt it as well, by the barely-there spasm in his hand and the way his slight smile faltered. And Roslin knew that while steps had certainly been taken in their relationship, there was so much more they could do, and she looked forward to seeing how far he’d let her take him. 

“Well,” she replied shakily, finding his silver eyes again, “what’re friends for?”

* * *

Less than an hour later, she fell asleep on his shoulder. Again, Vilkas wasn’t surprised. There was only so much mead a woman her size could consume before it got the better of her. 

He shifted slightly, careful not to disturb her, even though he should probably wake her up—they had a long way to go yet, and they should all get as good a rest as could be achieved in a tent. 

He looked down at her and couldn’t decide which sight was more pleasing—the northern lights painting the sky colors that could hardly be believed, or Roslin’s dozing face, leaning gently against his shoulder and bathing in their glow. 

She had freckles—he hadn’t realized. As well as a thin, fine scar dipping below her jawline. 

The beginnings of laugh lines. Long, thick, golden lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. The scent of lavender on the wind. Things he’d only noticed in passing before but were now completely captivating—pulling him in so far and deep, he’d willingly drown. 

But for every tiny revelation he saw, a blade cut ever deeper into him, until simply the consideration of the arch of her brow felt like it was scooping out his insides. 

These two parts of him were at war, and if he were the poetic sort, he'd say it felt like he was being torn in half. 

On the one hand, his plans hadn't changed—mere days stood between him and his ultimate fate, and the logic that led him to consider ending his life still rang true if he thought on it.

He knew there was a chance the cure would work, that things could go right for once, but it was hard not to be fatalistic when death was a possible consequence. It was only logical to prepare for the worst. 

But she made him want to  _ try— _ to try to see the bright spots among the misery and hope that tomorrow could be better. She showed him tonight that she had hardships—there was pain inside her and real, tangled emotion she'd yet to sort through. But she hadn't let it change who she was.

He found that he now deeply admired that sort of strength—of faith in the general goodness of things that previously, he’d dismissed as naivete. How wrong he had been. 

But now, he was worried that she'd placed that sort of faith in  _ him.  _ And he feared he didn’t exactly meet expectations in his current state. He was self-aware enough to know he wasn’t precisely a beacon of happiness. 

And if by some miracle the cure worked, he had no way of knowing if or how he would change. How much of him was a beast and how much was a man? Would he lose parts of himself along with the curse? Could former parts be regained?

The only conclusion he could come to was that he was wrong for her no matter what happened at the tomb—it was wrong to lead her on, to wordlessly promise a future of any sort when his fate was ultimately unknown. If only she didn’t make it so damned  _ easy _ to forget his troubles whenever she was near.

The idea of so much imminent change was dizzying, and it felt easier to slide back into his tired, repetitive spiral of dark thoughts as he pushed aside all the introspection to focus on the present issue. Taking action usually helped center him when his head got too full. 

Roslin hadn’t budged an inch for all his mental acrobatics, except for the tiniest drop of spit that had gathered in the corner of her mouth.

He couldn’t help an amused smirk or the painful twist in his heart at how she could be so restful against him. And suddenly, he couldn't recall a time before Roslin’s poisoning when he’d been physically close to another woman. 

Lavender wafted off her, and her small frame looked like a perfect fit for the curve of his arm, but when he lifted his opposite hand to her shoulder, he was careful to only touch her pauldron to gently rouse her.

A few light presses were enough for her eyes to open, halting his breath as they met his in an instant—precisely the color of a glacier, a piercing sort of blue.

For a brief second, he was taken by the urge to just lean in and crush his mouth to hers and deal with the consequences later. He’d seen much of her lithe body as he was taking care of her—enough to haunt his dreams nearly as much as the blood did—and despite being as respectful as he possibly could with his hands, he had little to no control over the tide of thoughts stemming from the sight of so much pale skin, the knowledge of how damned  _ soft  _ it had been. 

But thank the Divines she leaned away first, raising her arms and twisting into a stretch as she woke fully.

“Sorry,” she yawned, straining slightly, “didn’t mean to fall asleep on you like that. You could have woken me earlier.”

He met her icy gaze, deliberately ignoring how her side brushed his arm as she deepened the motion and arched her spine so enticingly, he had to look away.

He shook his head, pushing every single thought away to find relief. 

“It was nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Vilkas' heart grows about 3 sizes and he's still sad about it.
> 
> I spent so damn long on this chapter and I'm happy to be done with it! As always, be sure to drop a comment and tell me what you think!
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


	5. Chapter 5

Her sleep was dreamless and peaceful thanks to all the mead she’d imbibed and, despite having spent a good chunk of the night passed out on Vilkas’ shoulder, she felt rested when Aela kicked her awake shortly after dawn. 

But then she sat up in her bedroll and cracked her eyes open, and her head felt like it could split apart—she apparently neglected to drink any water when she got back to the tent. She took a few healthy swigs as soon as her hand found her waterskin, willing her head to stop throbbing so she could help break camp. Apparently, her Dragonborn's appetite didn’t extend to her tolerance for alcohol—she hadn’t drunk that much since… Well. Two years next month. 

She packed her bedroll and folded the tent as neatly as possible while Farkas scattered the remains of the campfire and Aela carefully secured Wuuthrad to her saddle. 

She watered her horse, and after shoving a hand into their communal sack of provisions for a couple of strips of jerky, mounted and steered him—a dark grey destrier that Eorlund had called “Steel”—over to a break in the trees where Vilkas waited astride Revka, his own bedroll stowed and saddlebags packed. He had been watching the morning light spread across the frozen landscape from the top of a low rise since Roslin left her tent. She wondered how long he’d been awake as Steel walked closer, but Vilkas’ state of mind was indiscernible beneath a mask of concentration.

Across the narrow valley that stretched from east to west loomed the northern range of mountains separating Winterhold from the rest of Skyrim, eternally capped with snow and practically impassable unless one already knew the way. 

Beside her, Vilkas scanned the line of peaks with almost terrifying focus until she nudged his arm, and he looked down to see a strip of dried meat in her outstretched hand. If he had even half the headache she did, he’d need something to eat. 

To her satisfaction, he took it but didn’t take a bite, holding it somewhat awkwardly before resting his hand against his leg as he kept staring at the mountains. She willed herself to not be bothered by it.

“Sleep well?” She asked instead, blinking in the pale sunlight that started to flicker through the trees. 

He looked away uncomfortably, fidgeting with the reins in his free hand. 

“Yes, thank you,” he replied tersely, returning his focus to the northern landscape. He hadn’t even looked her in the eye, and it stung more than the wind. More than she’d care to admit. 

She hadn’t known what to expect, but she certainly hoped that things could be better than this. That they’d changed after everything they’d said to each other last night—she might have had more to drink than usual, but she remembered everything with perfect clarity, including her confession that she’d abandoned her family and they probably either hated her or were dead as well. 

She forced a breath, wiping the worst thoughts away, and told herself that Vilkas was probably just plotting their route through the mountains and didn’t mean anything by his short, bereft reply. 

But she couldn’t help the feeling that she was suddenly, inexplicably back at square one with him. And the temperature around them felt like it had taken a nosedive—she felt a chill working its way through her armor. 

Behind them, Aela shouted that they were ready to leave, and without even acknowledging her, Vilkas turned Revka around and cantered back across their campsite, hoofbeats echoing in the empty spaces in her mind. 

“Roslin!” Aela called impatiently. “You coming?”

She straightened in her saddle, painting the most nonchalant of expressions on her face despite her throbbing head before turning to follow her down the forest path, passing Farkas who tended to bring up the rear of the party. 

She looked ahead to where Vilkas sat, his spine perfectly straight as Revka swayed gently beneath him, that stupid piece of jerky still in his hand. 

The path twisted and turned, frequently putting Aela in between them, but of course, Roslin didn’t miss the moment when Vilkas reached down to tuck the scrap into his saddlebag. 

She fought against her own thoughts, willing herself not to find some profound meaning in such a small gesture—not everything meant something, sometimes jerky was _just_ _fucking jerky._

And maybe confessions were just words in the end. 

* * *

The sunset found her kneeling over the carcass of a rabbit that had been killed by an arrow in its eye, clean and painless. It was the only way Aela knew to hunt—swift, methodical, and efficient. And with the mountain pass looming over them with scarcely more than a wasteland on the other side, there was limited time to gather what food they could kill or forage before there was little to no sustenance to be found. 

Roslin felt along the creature’s spine, pinching the skin up and down the bone. Rabbit skin was so thin and fragile, you hardly needed a knife to pull it off, but the idea of skinning an animal with her bare hands made her feel uncomfortably like one herself. And she’d never particularly enjoyed this aspect of hunting, to begin with. 

She’d just pierced the skin with her dagger, beginning a cut around the rabbit’s torso, when Aela slipped through the trees into the hollow, two more rabbits hanging from each hand. 

“Think we’ll need that many?” she asked before hunching over her rabbit, concentrating on making the cut straight and even.

“With yours and Farkas’ appetites, I’ll not leave it to chance,” Aela replied, sitting on a rock with another rabbit in her lap. “You two are the reason we’re out here.”

Before the slight guilt settled in, Aela pricked her quarry with an arrowhead, and then without hesitation, pried the skin apart with her fingers, ripping it in two and tearing it off the carcass in seconds. 

Roslin allowed herself a moment to be a little terrified of Aela—the famed huntress was the kind of person who would either not hesitate to kill you or not hesitate to kill  _ for  _ you. And only in the privacy of her mind would Roslin admit that even after weeks of knowing her, she wasn’t quite sure which side she fell on yet. 

They worked in silence for a short while, tossing the skins and offal into a pile to be buried later, largely ignoring each other until Aela glanced at her briefly.

“So,” she began once her last rabbit carcass was pristine and ready for a spit, “you fucking him?”

Roslin felt like she was the one who’d just taken an arrow to the eye. Her hands stilled over her own rabbit.

“Ah… who?” she replied dumbly, forcing her fingers to work again as she sliced carefully around the skin at a foot.

“Oh, come on.” Aela scoffed, sliding down to the ground to lean against her rock and wiping her hands on the grass beneath her. “You know who I mean and it isn’t ice-brain.”

Roslin looked up, eyeing her carefully and wondering if she, too, was about to be skinned. 

“Um, no,” she answered, still trying to get over her shock before reminding herself that she had nothing to hide—if his attitude today was any indication, she and Vilkas were going nowhere fast. “No, I am not.”

“But you want to,” Aela pressed, motionless except for her eyes that felt like they were poking and prodding at Roslin’s skin, searching for a thin spot she could shove an arrow through. 

“Why exactly are we discussing this now?” she dodged, more discomfited by Aela’s questioning than the fact that she was literally wrist-deep in intestines.

Aela sighed, averting her gaze to the forest floor that grew darker and darker in the fading light. Roslin finished, slipping the last carcass into the sack before looking around for a good place to dig a hole.

She’d just found a good spot a couple of yards away when she heard Aela make a small, frustrated noise. 

“I’m worried about him,” she said softly, still sitting with her knees drawn up and looking more vulnerable than she did standing over Kodlak’s body. 

Roslin was taken aback by her quiet honesty. She nodded in agreement before kneeling and sinking her fingers into the ground. 

“Well, that makes two of us,” she replied. “Why?”

Aela watched her briefly again before responding, eyes still somehow luminous in the cool dusk. “He lied to me earlier.” 

Roslin’s brow furrowed as she dug, fingers going numb the deeper she went. “About what?”

“He promised he’d let me help him control the shift when we returned to Whiterun. He didn’t mean it.”

Her hands froze as the implication took root. “You mean he…  _ can’t _ control it?” 

Aela shook her head, frustration showing through. “He blacks out  _ every _ time. Never remembers a thing.”

Roslin sat back on her heels, mind reeling.

Since her own turning, she’d shifted perhaps a half dozen times. While she’d never say that she had control as a wolf, she at least remembered the experience, even if it was only flashes at first. And through guidance, she’d learned some measure of discipline, at least enough to keep herself from slaughtering everything in sight.

But to have nothing, not even memory to guide him… It was no wonder he had panic attacks, given how much he valued restraint and caution. 

With the exception of Driftshade. Where he shifted in front of her, knowing he was uncontrollable. Where he’d painted the walls with blood and sinew with her out of sight only because he told her to stay behind him.

A chill ran down her spine as she wondered how close she’d been to being another smear on the floor, but in the darker, more vindictive parts of her mind, a righteous anger flared. On some level, she knew she was entirely justified in being furious at his recklessness and she’d personally held grudges for far less.

But something held back the anger, rising out of a fog in her mind like a half-remembered dream.

Forgiveness. He’d needed forgiveness for something when she was recovering from the Bosmeri poison—this had to be what he meant. And she couldn’t find it in herself to be angry. Hurt and a little sad, maybe, but he was clearly remorseful and she didn’t want to pile more guilt upon what was already there. 

She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present to redouble her efforts at digging. “That’s… terrible,” she replied simply, just to fill the air.

“It  _ is,” _ Aela responded vehemently, sitting up and away from her rock. “And an absolute waste of his potential—if he’d come to  _ me _ instead of the old man at the beginning, maybe things could have been different. He could have been the best of us."

Roslin nodded. She was inclined to agree—with his speed and agility, he was unmatched. Even by the likes of Aela. But something about her response caught Roslin’s ear.

“‘In the beginning’?” she asked as she stood, satisfied with the size of the hole she’d made.

Aela sighed, shifting to her knees to help Roslin toss the skins and entrails inside. 

“He’d probably kill me for what I’ve already told you,” she said when they finished, as she hefted the bag of meat to her shoulder.

“Exactly,” Roslin replied, brightening as she felt her voice shift back into her usual teasing cadence. “If you’re in this deep, what’s the harm in one more step?” 

Aela’s eyes sparkled in the near-dark as she smirked impishly. Roslin returned it with a full smile, hoping that Aela might hesitate a little in killing her now.

“Look, all I know is something happened his first time—when he was turned,” she responded as the light of a campfire began to glow through the trees. “Only his brother and Kodlak know what. I gave up asking a long time ago.”

They pushed through the pine branches into camp and were almost immediately set upon by Farkas, who gleefully took the sack of game right out of Aela’s hands despite her threat of dismemberment if he ate more than one. 

Roslin left them to their bickering, dropping her bow and quiver off at her tent, thoughtfully erected by one of the men, before making her way to the nearby stream to scrub the dirt and guts from her hands.

After a few moments, she heard footsteps behind her.

“I meant to say before,” Aela began, softer and less edged than usual, “that you might have a chance. At getting him to open up and listen. Maybe get him to smile for once.”

Roslin shook her head, nearly scoffing at the irony. She  _ did,  _ but it didn’t seem to matter. Every time he’d lightened up, he’d pull further away later. 

“I haven’t known him long,” she replied without turning, “but I’ve got the feeling that he just... doesn’t  _ want  _ to be happy.”

Aela gave a sigh—long and deep, nearly sorrowful. 

“Maybe he just doesn’t remember.”

* * *

_ Fifteen years earlier—  _

“How much further are we going?” Vilkas complained, hearing the whine in his tone but doing nothing to correct or apologize. It was late. He was tired. The old man had worked him since dawn, and all he wanted to do was sink into a puddle of stolen mead and not dream at all. 

“You bitch more than Aela, whelp,” Skjor yelled back at him from his horse, a sneer in his tone. “And that’s saying something.” 

He looked across to his brother, quietly observing the dark, rolling landscape with a degree of serenity that made Vilkas somehow angrier—he was growing tired of the questions that went unanswered and the way that the older Companions looked down on them. Farkas never wondered, never wavered from the challenges before him, but Vilkas felt every one of their calculating stares like they were needles, probing and evaluating. 

Life with the Companions was brutal work, day in and day out. Wake, eat, train with Kodlak, spar with Farkas, laps, strength exercises, more pushups than he could count, a few mouthfuls of food, inspecting and oiling every blade and piece of armor in the armory even if they hadn’t been used, hauling bucket after bucket of ore up to the Skyforge to melt overnight before finally being allowed to retire. And the entire time, he knew he was being weighed and measured for something he wasn’t allowed to know.

He hated it. Hated the secrecy, hated the monotony, hated Kodlak, hated all the scrapes and sores from being knocked into the dirt like he was nothing. 

But then, he hated most things. 

A few lengths ahead of Vilkas’ borrowed mount, Skjor pulled to a stop and motioned for them to do the same. Vilkas looked around—aside from the occasional bird, he saw nothing across the plains, heard nothing save the crickets that never slept, Stuhn damn them. 

But, as if hearing some silent signal, Skjor nodded his greying head decisively and dismounted, wordlessly trudging through the tall, waving grass without looking back.

The twins slid off their horses as well—they’d learned very quickly and very long ago that Skjor didn’t like to be asked too many questions. And he hated hesitancy and indecision. 

They followed the sound of his footsteps. winding around a few large rocks and through the yellow grass that had turned gray under the bright moons, until they found Skjor standing in the middle of a ring of trees, the center bathed in moonlight. His hands were clasped behind his back and he wore the same expression he adopted when watching Vilkas and Farkas train—cold, distant, and judging. 

They waited silently behind him, for whatever mental evaluation he was involved in to be complete. After a few minutes, he looked, his dead eye catching the moonlight ominously as his stare swept over them both. 

“The old man says you aren’t ready for this,” he said lowly, something like defiance entering his voice, “but I believe you might be.”

Vilkas’ heart leapt—he knew there was a reason they’d been roused in the middle of the night and brought to the middle of nowhere. If there was some big test, he’d do it. If this was what all the lifting and running and polishing had been for, he was more than ready. 

“You know that the Companions are the legacy of Ysgramor and his Five Hundred,” Skjor began, pacing back and forth in front of them, “carrying on the tradition of mercenary work and being impartial arbiters on matters of honor.”

Vilkas remembered—Vignar liked to recount centuries of history in his rambling way while the twins trained in the yard. He’d heard these tales a thousand times and didn’t have the patience to sit through another long-winded story. 

“So?” He interjected petulantly and Skjor froze in place. Beside him, Farkas silently looked down at his toes.

Vilkas braced himself for a swat over the head or some form of a reprimand, but Skjor only gave a cold look of warning before answering.

_ “So,” _ he spat mockingly, “Ysgramor himself entrusted our predecessors with the protection of the single greatest Nordic artifact in existence, and they  _ lost it.”  _

Skjor’s ire was palpable, souring the cool scent of pine on the breeze and quelling Vilkas’ scorn—but only slightly. He’d been kept in the dark for years and wasn’t about to suffer any more secrecy.

“What was it… sir?” He asked more calmly, adding the honorific when Skjor’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“The legendary axe of Ysgramor,” he replied, seemingly placated.

Vilkas felt his jaw go slack. 

“Wuuthrad?” Farkas asked wondrously. 

“It was lost in the second era,” Skjor continued, “to a cult of necromancers, and over centuries, it was broken into pieces and scattered across Skyrim.”

He turned away from them, facing the plains and breathing in the moonlight, which seemed to calm him further.

“An impossible task—finding a dozen shards of metal across some of the harshest wilderness in Tamriel.” He shook his head, crossing his arms, pulling the line of his shoulders tighter. “Nine hundred years, and we’ve only recovered two-thirds of them. And not without help.” 

He took another deep breath as Vilkas’ patience wore thin—enough about mistakes nearly a millennium old, what were they doing here  _ now? _

“Tell me,” he turned, looking Vilkas over, “in all the time you’ve spent polishing our armor, have you ever wondered why the Companions have adopted the wolf as our sigil?"

Vilkas nodded in assent—he had. The wolf didn’t match any other sigils he knew save Haafingar’s, and they were decidedly different stylistically. It was hard not to notice when he stared at their almost demonic, curving faces for hours at a time.

“Soon after the theft of Wuuthrad, we were given... a gift,” Skjor continued, his tone becoming almost reverent. “And it wasn’t long afterward until the sigil changed to the one you know.”

Vilkas felt his eyes widen as pieces began to fall into place. He quickly looked across to his brother and saw Farkas watching with a careful look in his eye.

“We were given strength. Speed. Heightened senses,” Skjor mused, pulling at the fingers of one of his gloves, tugging it off his hand with eerie calmness—Vilkas’ guts felt like a pile of knots. “We were made into the greatest hunters Tamriel has ever known. We are what it means to be a Nord. To reclaim what is ours and pay the price in blood.”

He listened, fully engrossed until Skjor drew the dagger from his belt and he had to resist the urge to step back. 

“If you wish to join us, to become men of the Circle and true sons of Skyrim, loyal to the history and legacy of our people,” he said, holding his bare hand out before them and drawing a deep red line across his palm, “you must pay as well.”

Vilkas watched the line of blood thicken to a shallow pool in Skjor’s hand, feeling torn. On the one hand, he was eager to prove himself, to help his brothers and sisters make history, and maybe earn his own room in Jorrvaskr along with some respect. 

But on the other hand, if Skjor was offering what Vilkas suspected, no one would fault him for hesitating or for thinking it through—Skjor was clearly offering them a choice.

But if it was a choice between being a glorified servant and forging his own path, there wasn’t much choice at all, was there?

So he squared his shoulders and stepped forward decisively, looking Skjor straight in the eye with an expression he hoped came off as confidence. Maturity. 

“What must I do?” he asked, hearing his brother follow suit beside him.

After a moment, Skjor’s expression shifted into something that could have been pride, but Vilkas had certainly never seen it directed at him. The sensation of receiving  _ approval _ from Skjor was foreign. 

“Kneel,” he commanded. After sharing a look with Farkas—a silent agreement with a reassuring nod—Vilkas complied, his knees sinking deep into the tall grass. 

Skjor towered over him, lit from behind by the twin moons as he stepped closer. Vilkas opened his mouth to ask what would happen next, but before he found his voice, Skjor leaned in swiftly like an ambush making its move. He gripped the back of Vilkas’ neck with his clean hand and shoved his blood-soaked palm over his nose and mouth, holding it in place until Vilkas began to wonder if Skjor meant to drown him. 

His eyes flew wide, meeting Skjor’s in confusion as he felt the blood slip past his lips and over his tongue, warm and metallic and familiar in an odd way—he’d lost count of how many times he’d tasted blood after being hit in the jaw. 

Finally, he was released and left to fall forward onto his hands, gasping for air and coughing and spluttering when the blood went down instead. It stung like needles but flowed like tree sap, slow and patient, feeling  _ wrong _ in every possible way as it slid further down. Somewhere around his heart, it shifted inside him, twisting and warping like a living thing with its own will that began fighting tooth and nail for control over Vilkas’ body.

Distantly, he heard Farkas fall to the ground beside him as Skjor’s voice drifted through the thick air.

_ Prepare yourselves. The first shift is the most trying. _

They could have been miles away or simply a memory. All he knew at present was the sensation of being slowly ripped apart from the inside as dozens of hidden blades began passing through his flesh with agonizing tenderness as if this  _ thing  _ was savoring him. 

A frenzied roar rang through his head, but he felt it in his bones rather than his ears. The entity moved along his limbs, down his spine, and even behind his eyes, reaching and stretching until his skin felt like it could split apart. 

He somehow found the strength to look up, to force his eyes open, and watch Skjor looking down on them with an absolutely blank expression, feeling a spike of betrayal so deep it might as well have been real—this was not what was promised. If this bottomless agony was the cost for strength and speed, it was too great. If that made him a coward, so be it. He’d gladly be branded as such if it meant the pain could end. 

But Skjor remained apathetic, and all at once, Vilkas felt a boundless rage building up like a wildfire, gripping and consuming him in mere moments. It burned indiscriminately until he could hardly remember a time before it like he’d been this way his entire life and only just realized. Layers and layers of fury broke over him like the tide and with each blow, the being inside him howled in exultation.

He  _ hated _ Skjor for doing this to him. And he hated Kodlak for not doing it sooner. He hated Vignar for his stories, Eorlund for his industry, Aela for her natural skill and discipline, Brill for whistling that same  _ fucking  _ tune every damned morning… 

He found that he even hated Farkas—his contentment and calm stoicism in the face of the mockery and abuse they suffered every day. He hated his brother’s ignorance and hated himself for making him so—for not telling his brother the truth about Jergen, the man who left them at Jorrvaskr. He wasn’t their father, just a damned hireling who drank himself to death as soon as he’d been paid for the errand. He’d left behind nothing and hardly spoke to anyone before expiring in a gutter.

Vilkas hated that he’d been left with no way of discovering who their parents were or why they’d abandoned them. And he hated that he still cared. 

The beast in his skin gave a final cry and Vilkas felt his own voice join in, losing himself to the madness as his vision grew hazy. Everything shifted through red to black as he was pulled under. Individual sensations wasted away one at a time—the feeling of the ground beneath him, the breath in his lungs, and even the pain until the only thing left to him was the scent of blood on the wind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That flashback scene has been with me since I started planning/writing this fic and is one of the big THINGS that I've wanted to write for it. More to come!
> 
> Thank you so, so, SO much for reading and all your lovely comments/kudos! It means so much that y'all keep coming back!
> 
> Feel free to drop a comment and tell me what you think!


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